Michael Rodriguez

I was always the kid that was hardly ever satisfied with a simple explanation, and I am proud to say I am still that kid at heart today. I believe that this is what makes education fulfilling, fanning student’s curiosities or helping discover them. Born in Queens and raised in Freeport, I grew up with an affinity towards STEM. In middle school, I was a part of a robotics team that would participate in competitions across the city and high school was where I found what I wanted to study once I made it to college: physics. I attended the City College of New York, where I earned my bachelor’s of science in physics. During my time there I found myself helping my peers in our homework assignments and privately tutoring lowerclassmen in their introductory physics and math courses. This was where I found my passion for teaching. It is not just seeing the students I have been helping grow academically but also seeing them appreciate how interesting, thought provoking and fulfilling physics and math can be. I however continued to pursue physics research. I was given the opportunity to go to New Mexico for a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at the University of New Mexico learning cosmological instrumentation. This included building a radio telescope to observe Jupiter! After graduating, I continued to pursue my interest in cosmology at Columbia University, where I was a scholar at the Bridge to the PhD program. Here, I took graduate level courses and researched the kinematic-Sunyaev Zeldovich effect. The effect describes light from the earliest point of time in our universe that we can see, The Big Bang, scattering off of galaxies. The scattering changes the “color’” or wavelength of light that we see. This effect can be used to probe the distribution of dark matter and in turn give us insight on the large scale structure of our universe. After my time at Columbia, I decided I wanted to go back to teaching. This is how I found myself to be with the wonderful team at Testtakers! I believe every student can find something in physics or math that can pique their interests, and I want to help foster that curiosity. When I am not tutoring, you can typically catch me practicing piano or playing video games. My favorite composer is Claude Debussy and I have been hooked on Hollow Knight: Silksong as of late.