At just 22, Sabrina is taking the world of physics by storm, even generating buzz that she might be the world’s next Albert Einstein.
The first woman to graduate at the top of her M.I.T. undergraduate program in 20 years, Sabrina’s papers are regularly cited by the likes of Stephen Hawking and her mentor Andrew Strominger.
Now at Harvard studying for a doctorate, she is researching black holes, gravity and space-time, areas of study tackled by Einstein and Hawking before her.
“Years of pushing the bounds of what I could achieve led me to physics,” says Sabrina, who says she likes spotting “elegance within the chaos”.
“Physics itself is exciting enough. It’s not like a 9-to-5 thing. When you’re tired you sleep, and when you’re not, you do physics.”
Sabrina also shuns the usual distractions favoured by other millennials. She doesn’t own a smartphone and also avoids social media; you won’t find her on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or even LinkedIn.
However, she does keep her website PhysicsGirl current with her many accomplishments and accolades, and a video of her plane-building exercise has been viewed more than 230,000 times on YouTube.
The plane, which she flew solo above Lake Michigan as a teenager, got her closer to space than she’d ever been.
She said these days she hopes to push herself even higher – open job invitations from aerospace developers and NASA await when she’s ready to join the workforce.
“I’m harder on myself than other people probably are on me,” she told the Chicago Tribune.
“I definitely feel like I have way more to do. It’s great to get recognition now, but hopefully it builds up to something.
“I’ll hopefully be right about having some kind of gut feeling that [will become] rather big at some point. Fingers crossed.”
