Valentina Simon

Valentina grew up in Washington DC, dancing annually in the Kennedy Center Nutcracker. She has received full scholarships to intensives with Dance Theater of Harlem, Koresh Dance, and Yin Yue Dance Company. She also attended the Kennedy Center Dance Lab, led by former Alvin Ailey principal Hope Boykin, where she was set in a piece by Darrell Grand Moultrie. In high school she balanced her dance with attending a STEM magnet school and programming image analysis algorithms for a biomedical engineering lab at Johns Hopkins, culminating in two research publications. Valentina is currently a Junior at Yale University, pursuing a major in Data Science and Statistics as well as dancing with the Yale Ballet Company and Yale Modern Dance Collective. In Summer 2023, Valentina interned at Bristol Myers Squibb in their World Wide Patient Safety Division as a machine learning expert. She is excited to share her journey of pursuing a dual focus in STEM and dance.