Tiernan Whitten
As of August of 2026, I am a senior at Aragon High School in San Mateo, California, and am set to graduate in 2027. Creativity has been a major part of who I am ever since I was born. Music, fantasy, problem solving. These things have shaped who I am and continue to be an important aspect of my life. The projects on this website are side projects which I am proud of and enjoyed creating. But I also have a strong interest in the sciences, specifically biology and biotech, which have captured my interest from my elementary school days, and which I aim to pursue in college and beyond.
Music
As the child of two musicians, I was encouraged to play music throughout my childhood. In elementary school I chose to play the trumpet because I had so much fun following my brother with the high school jazz band to various jazz festivals. Now I can confidently say I made the right choice, as now that I am in high school, I am the lead trumpet player in our jazz ensemble, and we have scored quite high in jazz festivals like the Reno Jazz Festival, the Redwood Empire Jazz Festival, the Santa Cruz Jazz Festival, and the CSM Jazz Festival. I love music and my appreciation for it prompted me to make my own compositions. I have composed over 15 tracks for my Boelver project that serve as environmental and storytelling pieces to enhance the world I am creating.
Biology
I have always been fascinated by making the body stronger. When I was younger, I was inspired by movies and tv shows with prosthetics and exoskeletons. I watched movies like Captain America where science enabled the transcending of human limits for the betterment of the world. I vividly remember thinking, "I want to do this: I want to make humanity better." And so, in my mind I envisioned two ways to approach this through the physical sciences: one, using robotics to advance the field of prosthetics; or two, using genetic mechanisms to modify organisms for the better. And since I wasn’t drawn to the coding and electrical engineering topics required for robotics, I chose genetics. When I reached high school and had to do labs in biology and chemistry class, it clicked even more. I loved being in the lab. Running tests, capturing data, and synthesizing results. These things were fun and engaging, and I finally felt like I was in the right place. This is the field I want to pursue academically and professionally.
Spanish
For my elementary school years, my parents enrolled me in the Spanish Immersion Program at McKinley Elementary School, for which I earned a Biliteracy Attainment Award after completing the full program in middle school. After this, I chose to continue my Spanish study and completed the Spanish 4 Honors and AP Spanish courses at Aragon High School, making me eligible for the Seal of Biliteracy. Over the 10 years I have studied Spanish, my love of the language (and languages in general) has only grown, and this was part of the inspiration to create things like Venris and the Encryption systems.Â
Cryptography
Even before I was creating cipher systems, I was interested in secrets. Keeping secrets to the child version of me was like nothing else and hiding these secrets in plain sight was even better. I remember my childhood friend who unfortunately moved away after second grade. He and I had only been friends for a year but even after he left, I still remained in contact with him. I would visit his new house and together we would play with nerf guns around his giant yard. In these games, we were soldiers and used morse code and planted messages across the yard which the other would have to find without being shot. These games really stuck with me and were the beginning of the beginning of my love of encryption. Over the years, I made lots of codes and it all ties back to that defining moment of my childhood.
