January 10, 2023
Editor’s note: This story is part of ‘Meet a UChicagoan,’ a regular series focusing on the people who make UChicago a distinct intellectual community. Read about the others here.
The summer before Joalda Morancy, AB’22, started high school, they were aimlessly scrolling through YouTube when something peculiar showed up in their recommended videos feed – an astronaut making a peanut butter and honey sandwich on the International Space Station. Though they had only a passing knowledge of outer space at the time, they instantly found the subject fascinating.
“I remember being super confused yet very intrigued about it,” they said. “The next thing I knew, I was falling down a spiral of research and discovery in the topic that would become my life-long passion.”
Nearly a decade later, Morancy, who studied astronomy and astrophysics in the College, has turned their fascination with space and alien lifeforms into a new children’s book.