This month, the SPeaker interviewed former 5 North Hall Councilor and current chair of the Halls Mariana Matus about herself and her time as a hall councilor. 

Mariana Matus.

Mariana is a second year PhD student in Computational and Systems Biology.  It is also her second year at Sidney-Pacific.  Her research explores how one could monitor the health status of a city by monitoring its waste waters, using Boston as a case study.  Mariana and her advisor wish to use this monitoring capability to follow disease dynamics in the context of a city.

Mariana has led a fascinating life.  She is from Mexico, born in Mexico city, but moved a number of times. Mariana has lived in a number of different cities and countries, including Israel, the Netherlands, the UK, and now the US, and she enjoys to travel.  Mariana speaks Spanish and English fluently, but also picked up some dutch and french from her time overseas.   While in college, she adopted a baby squirrel back in college, and raised her as a pet. The squirrel is still living with her mother and is almost six years old now!

Outside of her research and volunteering for SP, Mariana spends her down time watching some TV shows and movies.  Her favorite TV shows are Sherlock, The Good Wife and Betas, and her favorite movie is Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.  Mariana also enjoys learning new things outside of her field, especially things relating to programming, electronics, and machine learning.  She also enjoys visiting museums, oil painting and is currently learning how to swim.

 Mariana became a hall councilor to contribute back to the community because she really enjoyed her first year in SP. She was also extremely curious to learn how to organize events, become a better cook, gain leadership skills, and expand her network of MIT friends.  As a hall councilor, Mariana enjoyed coming up with fun events and making new friends.  These fun events included “Water War I”, a water fight and barbeque she organized with fellow hall councilor Francisco Unda, and “A feast of thrones” in which Mariana and hall councilor Helena Zhang cooked food from the “Game of thrones official cookbook”.  Mariana also organized the Mexican Coffee hour, which included a taco bar, her critically acclaimed* flan, and Mexican bingo.

Mariana enjoyed her experience as a hall councilor so much that she joined SPEC as the chair of the halls.  As chair of the halls, she will lead the SP hall councilors for 2014-2015.

* Fellow hall councilor Marianna Sofman claims it was the best flan she ever had.