Arianna Long

Arianna smiling.

Arianna is a physics PhD candidate and National Ford Fellow at UC Irvine. She uses major telescopes across the electromagnetic spectrum to learn about the birth and evolution of the most massive galaxies in the Universe. She is proud to be #BlackandSTEM, and is a first generation college graduate. She grew up in the Florida Keys and in Montgomery County, MD — forever curious about the expansive depths of both the ocean and the sky. Her path to PhD was winding, with moments spent on track to become a high school educator, epidemiologist, business consultant, data scientist, to now, finally, astrophysicist. Alongside her scientific roles, Arianna is also a mentor and leader, having founded and led several mentoring programs and directly mentored over 100 Black, Indigenous, and Latinx students in STEM. Her ultimate goal is to become a professor where she can spend her days pursuing her curiosities and mentoring the next generation of scientists.