Ishan Coutinho

Hello, my name is Ishan Coutinho, I’m a freshman here at the University of Washington and plan on majoring in Astronomy and Physics. I was born in New Delhi India, where the pollution made star gazing pretty hard. However, I don’t remember ever not loving space. For as far back as I can remember, through elementary school, when asked I would say I wanted to be either marine biologist or astronaut, firefighter or astronaut, chef or astronaut, movie director, or astronaut (the astro part definitely stuck). However, any hope of a career as an astronaut was short-lived. When I was 4 I was diagnosed and treated for leukemia and relapsed with it while on a summer holiday in DC when I was 8 and couldn’t fly home safely. Shortly after being re-diagnosed, I moved to California (long story, lovely night sky) and I got introduced to Stephen Hawking and his kid’s books, further intensifying my love for the stars. I would relapse for a second time in 5th grade, and this time received radiation treatment and a bone-marrow transplant. I received the lifetime maximum radiation, which makes the sunlight down on Earth dangerous for extended periods, let alone space. It was Stephen Hawking’s books and documentaries along with chats with different engineers and scientists at JPL I had that year that made me realize I didn’t need to go to space to explore it. And that’s when I finally went from astronaut to … theoretical physicist? I admit it! It took binge-watching all of Cosmos twice and reading Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Death by Black Hole to finally get on the right track towards astrophysicist. I moved to Seattle just before high school and 4 years later I am excited to learn about and explore the cosmos at the UW!