Spencer Cunningham

Hello! I'm Spencer and I am a 5th year student majoring in chemistry at the University of Guelph. This will be my last semester as an undergrad and I am hoping to pursue a masters in the future. I got into chemistry in high school as my teachers made it easy to understand and the fact that I found it super interesting. Funny enough was that all my chemistry teachers from my high school were University of Guelph alumni. I was inspired to pursue more education after my research into polymer chemistry with Dr. Ghandi. I found it be challenging, but also extremely fascinating! I was looking into making a small charged aromatic polymer that could help stabilize silver nanoparticles. I am also am helping Dr. Ghandi with a paper that is soon to be published which means I might be a co-author on a chemistry paper, which I am super excited for! I hope to continue my academic career and be accepted into a masters at University of Guelph, University of Toronto, or Western University. For either polymer chemistry, analytical chemistry, or bioinorganic chemistry.

A little-known fact about me! I love martial arts and at a very young age I got into kickboxing. I first started in family karate when I was around 10 years old. I pursued with karate and got my black belt when I was 17 years old. After I got my black belt, I started to teach people of many different ages martial arts. My school also offered kickboxing which I took up right after I got my black belt. I participated in many kickboxing competitions and eventually went into an amateur world championship called WKC (world kickboxing championships) at the age of 17. I went to my first championship in Italy where I was able to get bronze for my age and weight group. Later when I was around 19, I went to my last WKC event. This championship was held in Ireland where I was lucky enough to win gold for Canada! I continue to kickbox as much as I can and teach karate whenever I have the spare time to do so.

Some of my other hobbies/interests include video games and movies. Some of my favourite games would be The Last of Us, Civilization and Battlefield. One of my all-time favourite movies would be Interstellar I have watched it an embarrassing amount of times even though it’s a three hour long movie.