Who's Who: Corwin Shiu, Aspiring Scientist, Runner, Multiple Honor Recipient

Name: Corwin Shiu

Age: 18

Occupation: "I'm a summer research intern at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs”

Editor's note: Shiu provided his answers by email.

It looks like you posted an event (placing 21st among male teens and 474th among all the 43,403 registered runners). What kind of training went into that? I actually have had a pretty long history in running, and a good amount of experience racing. I joined the track and field team in sixth grade and since then I’ve been hooked. I've run for six seasons of cross-country and five seasons of track — the past three seasons of cross-country being on the varsity high school team.

As for the actual training, it wasn't too different from how we train for cross-country. We race and train for 5K races, so I swapped a day of speed work, which would otherwise be great for shorter distances, for a longer run to get me into the 10K mode.

Training for my marathon took an entirely different approach. Prior to signing up, the longest run I have ever done was a 15-miler when I got lost in Tilden. My goal was simply to finish without walking or stopping at all. I ramped up my mileage 10 percent each week, until I started hitting 60 miles a week.

Once I started working in the labs, it was incredibly hard to maintain a high-mileage workout schedule with a full 40-plus-hour job; most of my important training was done in the dark at 5:30 in the morning, before work. Getting out of bed some mornings took more than a trivial amount of will. San Francisco being notoriously hilly made me a bit nervous, so a majority of my training was actually done with large hills. It turns out the hills in the East Bay are much harder, and that training in El Cerrito, Berkeley and Richmond made the hills on race day a piece of cake.

Did you have a visualization of getting the time you got or did you aim past your own expectations? Bay to Breakers isn't known to be a very fast course or even one that is particularly good to race in. Unless you happen to be in the seeded or sub-seeded division, it's hard to get out fast for the first couple of miles because of the sheer number of people on the course. Knowing that, I ran the race more on feel than on time.

The SF Marathon was my first marathon, so I had no time that I was aiming for on the day of the race. I ran the race according to feel, but I'm very happy with my time. I tell a lot of people that my time was just a sliver above the Boston Marathon qualifying time, but even in retrospect I ran a really tough race. Who knows? Maybe Boston will be in my future.

It looks like you worked very hard throughout high school, with many awards (including being one of two class salutatorians alongside Chongiin Kim, a National Merit Commended Student, President's Award for Educational Excellence, University of Rochester Bausch & Lomb Science Award, Penelope W. and E. Roe Stamps IV Leadership Scholar Award, Golden State Merit Diploma and North Coast Section Scholar Athlete Award). How many awards did you win at the Albany High Senior Awards ceremony in total? I think the important thing is to stay focused on a long-term goal. When I was an underclassman, I had a lot of inspiration from upperclassmen. They always seemed like they knew what they were doing, and being the tiny freshman/sophomore at the time, I would often ask for advice.

Now that I know most of it was probably improvised, I might not have taken their word to be gold, but their mentorship really helped me throughout high school, and because of it I was always aiming for something more. Awards are just awards. They don't have much bearing on future work.

What is your background in science? Is it something that excites you? For the past two summers, I have worked at the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. It's been a phenomenal experience for me — from running reactions and seeing nanometer-scale particles through electron microscopy, to simply talking to other scientists and listening to their stories.

What I like the most about working in the labs is the fact you're never doing anything the same. You might be analyzing your results one day, catching up on scientific literature, performing reactions, debugging reactions, or learning new techniques.

While research can get very frustrating, because no one truly knows the answer, it's also incredibly satisfying when you finally get results. It's hard to not feel like you're working toward creating the future.

What was it like being captain of the science team? The Albany High Science Bowl team has had a lot of success for longer than anyone my age remembers. When I was made the captain of the team, I felt like I had huge shoes to fill.

Being the captain of the team gives you the final say for your team's answer. Every person on stage has spent literally hundreds of hours combing through textbooks, so you can imagine what happens when there is disagreement among the team. As the captain, you have to figure out which answer is best. It might not be your own, or you might not even have remote background knowledge to settle a dispute; you simply have to trust your teammates.

What do you plan on studying at the California Institute of Technology? Physics. I find the research questions in physics to be the most personally interesting because they have such huge consequences in our understanding of the universe. That being said, my mind is still open to other fields, because I really have not found a field I don't enjoy. I hope later go to graduate school and eventually lead a career in academic research.

What is your history in El Cerrito? My parents moved here in 1994. I've lived here practically my entire life. I attended and grew up in my parents' cleaners on Fairmount, before it was sold to my aunt. My older brother and I used to frequent , to gaze at all of the amazing baked goods and occasionally buy one with our pooled pocket change.

What are your favorite hobbies (when you have time)? I've actually been cooking a lot recently. It's partially aided by the fact that I'm going to have to survive on my own in a couple of weeks, but I actually find it really fun browsing local farmers markets, getting inspired by the plethora of recipes that you see online and in books, and bringing those instructions to life.