Caltech Women’s Track & Field Welcomes Class of 2027

Caltech Women’s Track & Field will add several new student-athletes to the squad as the program embarks on its 2024 season.

Six first-years will join a team that is coming off quite the successful campaign this past spring. In 2023, the squad defeated Cal Lutheran University by 20 points, topped the University of La Verne at the conference championship meet and posted nearly 25 new entries on the all-time top-ten Caltech record list.

Meet the program’s newest Beavers:

Layla Adeli

Pacific Palisades, Calif. / Palisades Charter
Distance

Adeli joins the roster with a number of high achievements in both the world of athletics and academia. The rising first-year finished in the top-15 at the LA City Section CIF XC Finals before qualifying and competing at both the CIF City Section Finals and State Championships. The Southern California native comes to Caltech with some impressive personal records, including a 2:33 in the 800-meters and 5:21 in the 1600-meters. Outside of running, Adeli has published a research paper on Nanotechnology in Cancer Therapy and was granted the Rose Gilbert Foundation’s Scholar-Athlete Award. Adeli has also took part in a computational biology program at Carnegie Mellon, where she worked to develop algorithms to analyze bacteria samples before ultimately writing code to align, assemble and organize strands of DNA. The first-year was recognized as a California Scholarship Federation seal bearer and was a member of the National Honor Society; she volunteered for Scientific Teen Partnership where she reached out to other organizations that strived to highlight STEM in their communities. She will study bioengineering this fall.

Ivy Brainard

Charlotte, N.C. / Providence Day
Sprints

Brainard comes to the Institute after an incredibly accomplished high school career. A sprinter and hurdler, the standout qualified and competed in North Carolina’s DI Track & Field State Championships in every season it was offered. This past spring, Brainard earned her best-ever individual finish at the championships as she picked up the fourth-place finish in the 300-meter hurdles with a time of 49.24 seconds. In 2022, Brainard placed fifth in the 200-meters (27.13) and seventh in the 100-meters (12.93) before helping her team to the win in the 4×100-meter relay (49.20). Outside of track, Brainard has conducted research the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where she studied mutations in the CRYAB gene. She has won the Scott Harrington Mathematics Award as well as the 2022 Charlotte Hackathon coding competition. Additionally, the North Carolina native has interned for Bank of America, where she worked with a non-profit to use data analysis to combat the affordable housing crisis in Charlotte. A regular volunteer tutor in math and science, Brainard plans to study economics and data science at Caltech.

Zara Kanold-Tso

Bethesda, Md. / Winston Churchill
Distance

Kanold-Tso will bring a special sort of experience to the program — in addition to a quick 5K (20:55) and 2-mile (12:26), the rising first-year comes to the Caltech with marathon experience, running a 3:42:44 at the 2021 Philadelphia Marathon to finish sixth in her age group. The distance specialist finished in the top-30 at the 2022 MOCO County Championship and placed in the top-fifty at the 2022 Maryland State Meet (4A Region) in addition to helping her team to a slew of regional championships between 2020 and 2022. Academically, Kanold-Tso pre-published a co-written paper in Biorxiv after interning at the NIH Neuroscience Lab in the division of Critical Brain Dynamics, where she conducted research, developed and built instrumented activity wheels for automatic data acquisition using MATLAB. Additionally, Kanold-Tso has published scientific diagrams in Science Mag, JARO and ENeuro; she was a member of the Engineering Honor Society, Mu Alpha Theta, Science National Honor Society and English National Honor Society. The first-year plans to study bioengineering and/or computational neural systems.

Marie Louise Choi-Schattle

Barrington, R.I. / Barrington
Middle Distance, Pole Vault

Choi-Schattle brings an impressive resume to the program as she enters her first collegiate season. Her senior year, the star qualified and competed in the pole vault competition at the Rhode Island Outdoor State Track & Field Championships, placing in the top-10 of all competitors. The East Coast native earned a top-15 finish in 2022; she boasts a personal best of 8’6″. A multi-skilled athlete, Choi-Schattle will also take on the middle-distance events after regularly competing in events from the 600-meters to 1000-meters in high school. She earned All-Class and All-Division in the 4×800-meter relay in addition to scooping All-Division in the 1000-meters. Outside of athletics, Choi-Schattle is a winner of the prestigious National Merit Scholarship and is a Rensselaer Medalist. She was a Science Olympiad Leadership team member in high school, placing first in Chemistry Lab in 2022 and 2023. A 2022 University of Rhode Island Chemistry Competition winner, Choi-Schattle was also a Yale Global Scholar, an American Society Award winner and a member of the Brown Formula SAE team in high school. She will look to study mechanical engineering and will also compete for Caltech Women’s Soccer.

Isha Goswami

Saratoga, Calif. / Saratoga
Sprints

An experienced 200-meter and 400-meter runner, Goswami will add depth to the sprints squad as she dons the Caltech uniform. A two-time qualifier to the CCS Finals, Goswami sports personal records of 26.53 seconds in the 200m and 1:01.06 in the 400m. She earned a pair of sixth-place finishes in each after racing in the two distances at the SCVAL Conference Championship Meet in 2023. Academically, Goswami has conducted research at the Intelligent Conversational Agents and Neural Networks Lab at San Jose State University, where she worked on a reproducibility project for a labeling model for conversational agents. She has volunteered with Saratoga CoderDojo to teach elementary and middle school students basic Python and Java as well as with the SUSD summer school as a teaching assistant where she helped students with math. Additionally, Goswami is a Social Dilemma Debate Project Semifinalist, a three-time qualifier for the American Invitational Mathematics Examination and the Founder of Ethics in Technology Club at her high school. She was also an officer in Science Club and Women in STEM Club. A National Merit Scholar Finalist and AP Scholar with Distinction, Goswami plans to study computer science at the Institute.

Aurelia Kuester

San Diego, Calif. / Canyon Crest Academy
Middle Distance

Kuester will join Choi-Schattle on the women’s soccer team in the fall before the two players embark on the track & field season in 2024. A talent in both sports, Kuester will use her speed seen on the pitch as she races the middle-distance events for the Beavers. Kuester thrived in both the 400-meter and 800-meter lengths at Canyon Crest in addition to taking on the 4×800-meter relay. Academically, Kuester is an AP Scholar with Distinction, a National Merit Commended Scholar and a three-time Inamori Scholarship Recipient. She comes to Caltech after interning at UC San Diego, where she participated in prosthetic research to build a smart socket for transtibial prosthetics. The SoCal native has also conducted research into the toxicity levels in the Tijuana River estuary. Additionally, the star has personally built and programmed a robotic vision system using the Dobot robotic arm. Kuester is a founding member and treasurer of the Association of Youth Student Injury Prevention, a Girls Who Code member and has participated in FTC Robotics. She plans to study bioengineering upon arriving at the university.

The six newcomers will join a number of significant returners as the team looks to take another step up in the competitive Southern California Intercollegiate Conference (SCIAC).

Stay tuned to GoCaltech.com for an official schedule release.