Surrounded by self-built wooden models, scattered pieces of origami and introductory circuitry sets ever since he was a kid, MVHS alum ‘25 Allen Li joined the Science Olympiad Team when he entered Kennedy Middle School to further explore his curiosity of the physical world. From there, his passion for hands-on work led him to numerous physics-related events, where his growing excitement marked the beginning of a physics career.

Li started participating in the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) F=ma examination — an exam used to find the highest-scoring physics students across the country — when he came to MVHS, as well as joining the Physics and Engineering club. 

“Physics has a bunch of equations on paper, but those equations have real implications on the stuff that you see around you in everyday life,” Li said. “The goal of physics is to emphasize that there is a connection between what seems like random stuff that you’re learning in school and actual, practical stuff that happens in the real world.”

Li’s hard work and dedication, training through physics one problem at a time, paid off when he was selected for the U.S. Physics Team training camp and chosen as one of the top five students in both his junior and senior years to represent the nation at international physics olympiad competitions. At the 2024 European Physics Olympiad, Li finished in second place overall as an individual, with all five U.S. competitors winning gold. Gold medals are awarded to competitors who score above a certain threshold, and the entire team had achieved this feat. Tengiz Bibilashvili, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Academic Director of the U.S. Physics Team, holds every team member in high regard.

“Our U.S. Physics Team members are brilliant and also leaders, in the sense that they let themselves grow up without any pushes in the back by a coach who will tell you what to do on a daily basis,” Bibilashvili said. “That’s a big deal. That’s a person who knows what they do, and it’s amazing. Every single one of them, including Allen, is absolutely amazing in how they shape themselves.”

At the 2025 International Physics Olympiad, the U.S. team made history by being the only country to win five gold medals, with Li scoring first among the U.S. members. While the team had won five gold medals before, this was the first time they stood alone in achieving this result. Days later, President Donald Trump welcomed the team to the White House to celebrate the achievement. Li says that hearing the results of the competition felt like a massive relief for the team, who were confident in their performance but still uncertain about the outcome.

“It was exciting to know that all five of us who were in this together, who had studied together for basically the past two months, had all our efforts pay off,” Li said. “We all ended up scoring really well.”

A significant part of the preparation for the competition was the training camp, where the top 20 highest-scoring students in the United States Physics Olympiad (USAPhO) exam from across the nation were invited to receive intensive training. Li felt that the training camp was an amazing experience for him, as he was surrounded by peers who were just as passionate about physics as he was.

“It was really fun,” Li said. “It’s also a lot of stress. The morning might be a lecture, the afternoon might be a test, and then you have three or four hours of fun and you have to sleep because there’s another test the next day. It’s stressful, but I think it’s really worth it to start forming those connections, talking to people and learning about what you might end up doing in the future.”

Despite there being only 20 students who qualified for the camp, senior Raymond Feng was also among them, making him and Li the only two campers from the same school. Raymond said that knowing someone else at camp made him feel much more comfortable being there, which allowed him to integrate into the learning environment much more smoothly. 

“Even from the start of the journey, I flew with Allen to camp, and he helped me through a lot of things about camp that people would have to figure out when they entered camp for the first time, like what the experiments are like and what camp problems felt like to do,” Feng said. “He also helped me get to know his senior group pretty well, because typically for camps, the senior group is a little bit more distant from the juniors.”

Towards the end of the camp, Feng scored among the top six students, making him an alternate member for the U.S. Physics Traveling Team. Although he gives partial credit for this final outcome to his personal efforts throughout the year, he largely attributes this achievement to Li’s constant support for him prior to the summer, when they would have mini-study sessions during tutorial time or outside of school to solve new problems together.

“I was very surprised that he would be willing to partner with me for studying physics,” Feng said. “When that settled, Allen’s belief in me also made me believe in myself. Had I not met Allen, pursuing the Physics Olympiad would have felt like a very distant goal. However, after meeting him, it felt a lot more realistic.”

During these sessions, Li often served as a coach to Feng, guiding him in exploring new concepts while still allowing him to learn independently through personal experimentation and trial-and-error rounds. While Li is glad he had the opportunity to teach Feng using his experience while reinforcing his own physics knowledge, Feng shares that what he learned from Li went beyond the scientific field of physics and towards the way he perceives his own growth in learning now. 

“He taught me that learning is not a competition, because every time I met with Allen, it never seemed like he saw me as his competitor, but rather a friend,” Feng said. “I wasn’t good enough to be his competitor, but he never saw it like that. He shared with me anything that I asked for, and he always provided a lot of help to me. So I think that overall, I would be a lot more open to supporting other people’s learning and helping provide them with resources in the future too.”

Bibilashvili marvels in his observations of Li’s interactions with other teammates on the U.S. Physics Team both during the camp and at the International Olympiad. He says that Li — someone who is both intellectually sharp and socially humble — set a standard for the people around him to be not only as strong in physics and math, but also to be a good person.

“He’s a warm person,” Bibilashvili said. “It’s a really good quality for big scientists who know that they’re some of the best. We hosted an event at my house in 2024, and on a couple of occasions, my wife later asked me, ‘Oh, how is that kid doing?’ Even she could immediately see his personal qualities, and just from one dinner at our place, he fell into her memory. I wish there were more students like him because he’s a really special kid, and I hope to stay in touch to see his progress during his undergrad study and beyond.”

Feng says that Li’s subtle encouragement for him to pursue what he wanted, without worrying about whether the result would satisfy him, is what really motivated him to deepen his work ethic in physics and start thinking about it beyond the limitations of textbook theories. 

“Everyone starts out at a similar level for a lot of these things, but the thing that helps someone actually excel is the inspiration,” Feng said. “For me, it was Allen. Allen told me that he also had an inspiration from two years ago. For most of the people I know, they also had inspiration from their peers. It’s really important to get inspired by someone.”

Now, as a freshman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Li has a goal to continue guiding others by becoming a Physics Olympiad coach in the future. As someone who sincerely enjoyed the experimental parts of the labs conducted during camp and at the international competitions, he hopes to provide students with more opportunities to create and explore physics through practical application, using their hands and eyes, something that sparked his own passion for the field of physics.

“I’d say that if you find yourself at all interested in physics, there are a lot of exciting things you can do to explore your curiosity,” Li said. “At the end of the day, finding the things in physics I loved kept me excited to find out more about the laws of our world. A big achievement always feels great, but really nothing beats the satisfaction of finally understanding something you’ve long wondered about.”