Vivian Nguyen was born in Santa Ana, California in 2000, and grew up in Florida, Arizona, and Oregon. She took an interest in organic chemistry during her junior year Advanced Chemistry course at Wilson High School in Portland, OR, and went on to Lewis & Clark College in her senior year for an introduction to higher education through a General Chemistry course. In Fall 2018, she enrolled at Oregon State University as a Pre-Pharmacy student; however, she quickly decided to follow her instinct and switched to a BS track in Chemistry. After being inspired by Dr. Daniel Myles, she joined the Blakemore Research Group in Winter 2020 as an Undergraduate Research Assistant working with Mahsa Khoshbakht on the synthesis and bioactivity assessment of chalaniline B derivatives. In addition to her academic studies and research work, Vivian worked as a teaching assistant for the OSU Honors General Chemistry series from early 2021 thru Spring 2022. Vivian graduated with a BS degree from OSU in 2022 and went on to pursue graduate studies in synthetic organic chemistry at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO.