Malu Junco ’27 didn’t see herself as a science student. At all: “I thought I was bad at it. It was not for me.”
But when the pandemic drastically reduced educational access in her “super, super small” hometown in Brazil, Junco, then in high school, decided to tackle science her own way. As one strategy to study and master the information, she began posting videos of herself explaining complex scientific processes on TikTok.
People took notice, and Junco soon learned that she was not alone in her struggle to understand and find her place in science.
“I started seeing this other side of science, one that was about understanding and reimagining our world, building community, and solving problems,” she said. “I began to comprehend that science was not just on paper. It can change people’s lives and perspectives.”
“Now, science has become something beautiful to me, something like art, something holy. I can cry talking about it,” she added. “It’s my biggest passion, because I found my place.”
Junco’s place is not in the laboratory but in the intersection between science and society. A Science Management major at CMC, she is interested in bridging those two worlds to make science accessible to and inclusive of all.
“My goal is to help close the distance between where knowledge is produced and where it’s needed. To bring science to the people it’s meant to serve, including the ones who've been left out or ignored along the way, because science is meant to serve those people, too.”
Her approach is working. Junco is globally recognized as a science communicator, in part because of an invitation to create educational content for Learn on TikTok—her followers now number more than 320,000—and through her involvement with UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).
“Imagine, on a random Wednesday, you receive an invitation from UNESCO to attend the International Day of Girls and Women in Science in Paris, and it’s happening the next week,” said Junco, a CMC sophomore on campus at the time. “I had no idea how I was going to get there. But I knew I had to find a way.”
That’s when she tapped into CMC’s student-supporting resources.
“I went to the Soll Center [for Student Opportunity] and said, ‘Hi. I have this invitation and no idea how to make it happen. Can you help me?’” Junco recalled. “I was asking for a miracle. And they gave me one.”
“The liberty CMC gives students to explore is amazing. I would have missed opportunities like that if it weren’t for support like this,” she added.
The same is true for getting to CMC in the first place. As an ambitious teenager aspiring to be the first from her high school to study abroad, Junco took a five-hour bus ride to a college-admission fair at a much bigger school in São Paulo, only to be denied entry because she wasn’t a student there. A CMC admission officer at the event noticed what Junco described as her “battle” to get in, asked that she be permitted passage, and the rest is history still in the making.
Such fearless determination has consistently been on display as Junco expands her leadership profile. After her “miracle trip” to UNESCO’s Paris headquarters in 2024, she returned the following year—this time, to the stage as a panel moderator. Since then, she has facilitated multiple discussions on topics ranging from the role of media in science to youth engagement in STEM to inclusive health research. Recently, she was invited to join UNESCO’s International Consultative Group of Experts for Closing the Gender Gap in Science as one of its 13 members.
Contributing to Junco’s savvy as a facilitator on health research was her CMC-supported summer internship at NanoBusiness in Rio de Janeiro in 2025. There, she helped develop Converge Lab, a venture builder for deep-tech startups that helps scientists become entrepreneurs.
Through CMC’s focus on integrated sciences, Junco, an Interdisciplinary Science Scholar, has come to understand that her early confusion stemmed from the separation of scientific disciplines.
“Before, nothing made sense to me—I was studying atoms in chemistry, and atoms in physics, but we weren’t exploring the interconnection. Nothing was linking up,” she said. “It’s going be harder to find solutions to the problems we must solve if we focus only on one area. Innovation requires a complex understanding of how things talk to each other.”
Now, when Junco looks back on “that girl who was in her room, in her small town, wondering if she was being too bold in pursuing education abroad,” she sees so much growth—and feels even more gratitude.
“Here I am today, traveling the world, talking about science, and connecting with people around the globe. I’m so grateful. A door to the whole world was opened, and I hope to hold that door open for others.”