kirisutogomen | Is this a real person?

Erika Ebbel is the new Miss Massachusetts. That's Erika Ebbel '04, Course 5 SB. Fourth runner-up, incidentally, was Joanne Chang '03. Erika did of course also defeat Tsay Chia-Jung from that liberal arts school up the river.

Erika plans to do a joint MD/PhD and work in designing anti-viral pharmaceuticals.

In high school Ebbel was an Intel "Science Talent Search" finalist, and later won California 's prestigious Science Fair Student of the Year and Science Fair Project of the year awards. A classical pianist, she graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music at age 17. (For the talent portion of Miss America, Ebbel will play Chopin's Fantasie–Impromptu.) She's fluent in Russian and Spanish, and has more than a passing knowledge of Japanese. A member of the MIT pistol club, she's a pretty fair shot with a .22 caliber. She was a member of the MIT Dance Troupe and currently serves as an editor for Wellness Options magazine, a Canadian publication available at Barnes and Noble in the United States as well as other book stores in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia. And forget the swimsuit competition -—- Ebbel can flat out swim, as she's an "advanced open water" scuba diver.

She also founded WhizKids, a nonprofit foundation designed to bring science and math fairs to junior high and high school students.