‘Total effervescence’: Princeton community remembers Minh-Thi Nguyen ’21

Minh-Thi Nguyen ’21, a gifted physicist and cherished friend, passed away on June 21 after being struck by a box truck while cycling in Cambridge, Mass. She was 24 years old.

Friends and mentors remember her ability to bring people together and her generosity towards everyone she encountered.

“How I remember her is as a friend who had a positive impact on my life, and the lives of so many people at Princeton, but with this total effervescence … making everyone who is a part of it feel special and cared for,” Alex Kaplan ’21 told The Daily Princetonian.

Nguyen was born in Hanoi, Vietnam on Oct. 28, 1999, later moving with her family to Amsterdam, Troy, N.Y., and Orange County, Calif. She attended Los Alamitos High School, where she founded a science mentorship program called Growing Up STEM, and graduated as valedictorian of her senior class.

As an undergraduate, Nguyen studied physics, with certificates in Applied and Computational Mathematics, Statistics and Machine Learning, and Applications of Computing. After graduating, she worked at a quantum computing startup before entering a Ph.D. program at MIT, where she worked as part of a quantum engineering group.

“We are hosting a dinner to celebrate one Ms. Minh-Thi Nguyen for her tireless contributions to our well-being in Math 204 and Physics 106 this semester,” read an email sent to a classmate of hers sent in May 2018.

“I can personally attest to the fact that without her problem sets, I would have probably had to drop both classes and fail out of this institution. And I know that while I’m perhaps an extreme case, I am not alone. All of you have been touched in some way by Minh-Thi’s hard work and selflessness, and thus we are honoring her.” 

According to Kaplan, thirteen students showed up to the dinner, all there for Nguyen.

‘Always put her friends first’

Many of Nguyen’s friends, including Hudson Loughlin ’19, remember that she “always put her friends first.”

“Minh-Thi was most proud of all of her friends and really of bringing people together,” said Loughlin, who got to know Nguyen during graduate school at MIT. Nguyen was the type of friend who wanted to introduce people to each other across friend groups.

“She loved to host a dinner party,” he recalled. “Her apartment had this great rooftop — it probably could comfortably fit eight people, and there were never fewer than probably a dozen and a half people over at the dinner parties.”

Catherine Benedict ’20, who became close friends with Nguyen while living in Boston, remembered her going out of her way to build their friendship. 

“Minh-Thi was exceptionally kind and thoughtful to everyone, not just her friends,” Benedict wrote to the ‘Prince.’ “Before she and I even became close, she brought me a crochet hook and yarn one day — totally out of the blue — because she remembered me casually mentioning that I wanted to learn how to crochet.”

At Nguyen’s funeral, Kaplan noted, in a speech shared with the ‘Prince,’ that this commitment to cultivating friendships was apparent from the beginning of her undergraduate years.

“Minh-Thi, ever the socialite,” he said, “typically had between two and four different pregames to attend and at least 10 people she needed to see before making it to the street” on a night out.

Another friend in her undergraduate years, Aryan Bhasin ’22, told the ‘Prince’ that although Nguyen enjoyed social groups, she was really “an introvert, in a positive way,” who greatly valued connecting with others one-on-one.

“She was incredibly funny in sort of a subtle way,” Loughlin said. 

“She had a loud, distinctive, and infectious laugh that would often come out when she was trying to tell her own stories,” Benedict noted.

‘She was involved in everything’

President of E-Club — the largest student-run activity on campus — an Outdoor Action leader, rugby player, member of Cap & Gown Club, and actress in the Vagina Monologues, Nguyen was incredibly involved in the pursuit of hobbies on and off campus.

“Minh-Thi was an amazing chef who would make french fries and mochi from scratch — which I didn’t even know was possible,” Benedict wrote to the ‘Prince.’ “She had amazing taste in music; she knew every obscure band and would spend hours making playlists.”

“She weightlifted every day and could bench 135 lbs,” Benedict continued. “She loved to run, ski, and hike, and relished waking up early on weekends to drive out to Vermont or New Hampshire and get outside. She loved to read.”

“She was involved in everything,” Kaplan said. “She was all over campus. She touched so many people during her time at Princeton … like a million different organizations, and in each one of those, everyone felt like she was their best friend, because she was so thoughtful.”

Bhasin met Nguyen in his first year on campus, when she was a sophomore. He was a member of IgniteSTEM, a subteam of E-Club, when Nguyen was director. In that role, he said, “she was also unofficially kind of like a secret social chair.”

Nguyen pushed him to run to succeed her as president, and she made efforts to mentor him after he took over, even while she was finishing her thesis.

“She cared about whatever she was a part of a lot, even after she wasn’t a part of it [anymore],” he said.

‘A tremendous loss for the scientific community’

A dear friend to many, Nguyen is also remembered fondly by Princeton peers and mentors alike for her academic prowess. Dr. Andrew Sifain, who worked closely with Nguyen on her senior thesis while he was a postdoctoral research assistant, wrote to the ‘Prince’ that she was “such a brilliant person and had all the potential to be a difference maker in this world.” 

“She made [an] extraordinary effort to learn a completely new topic in quantum physics in mere months,” he said of her thesis. “She was so excited to start her journey at MIT. It’s truly so sad to see the life of someone with so much talent and zest for life to end so early.”

At a June 24 vigil hosted by Cambridge Bicycle Safety, a cycling advocacy group, Loughlin quipped, in a speech shared with the ‘Prince,’ that Nguyen “was so successful that she was once rejected from a national fellowship for the country’s top Ph.D. students because they thought her resume had to be fake.”

As a Ph.D. student at MIT, Nguyen worked under Professor Paola Cappellaro, who wrote to the ‘Prince’ that her passing was “a tremendous loss for the scientific community.”

“She was not only super-smart, but also fearless in tackling new projects and challenges and always inventive. She was working on multiple projects at the same time, from theory, to bio-sensing, to the most complex many-body quantum dynamics, and bringing her physics intuition and experimental grit,” Cappellaro wrote. “And even more importantly, she was an overall amazing person, always a joy to interact with, generous with her friendship and mentorship. She made us all better.”

“It feels unimaginable that someone so young and full of life could be killed so tragically,” Loughlin reflected at the June 24 vigil. “For all of us, I hope Minh-Thi can continue to be an inspiration to live life to the fullest and to always seek out the next adventure.”

Nguyen is survived by her younger sister Julia Nguyen, her parents, Hoa Tran and Hieu Nguyen, her boyfriend Nick Krasnow, and her pet dog Cooper.

Annie Rupertus is a head News editor for the ‘Prince’ from Philadelphia, Pa. who often covers activism and campus governance.

Olivia Sanchez is an associate News editor for the ‘Prince.’ She is from New Jersey and often covers the graduate school and academic departments.

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