Senior of the Year: Ishaan Vohra

By SAM ALTMAN ‘26

At the very top of Phelps Science Center, you peer into the glass windows of the physics lab on a crisp Sunday afternoon. The rest of the building is mostly empty, but here, Exonians are hard at work. Intricate diagrams of wave-particle duality, space-time diagrams, and how to best optimize the torque of a thrown frisbee. One student, whose voice barely reaches your ears through the glass, nevertheless captures the attention of each and every physicist in the room, as they watch intently each gesture he makes to the board. Three-year senior Ishaan Vohra is well-known all around campus for his diverse range of interests. In addition to his unfailing dedication to everything physics at Exeter, leadership and active participation in electronic music, and love for racket sports, Vohra’s kindness and humility is known far and wide as a pillar of the Exeter community at-large.

“I’m actually from a lot of different places,” Vohra said. “I was born in Hong Kong and lived there for about nine years. After that, I moved to Canada for four years, and then I stayed in the UK for three, before finally coming to boarding school. I’d say being in all of those places has really affected my worldview. You sort of get to experience how different people celebrate their culture and live their lives. But overall, Exeter is a bit of a special place to me; it’s the first place I’ve met a lot of people who have also moved around. Occasionally, I’ll meet someone in the hallway and strike up a conversation and realize that we went to rival schools back in whatever country I was living in at the time.” 

Having lived in so many places around the world, Vohra initially struggled to integrate into the Exeter environment. “What originally drew me to Exeter was the academic opportunities, the community and the freedom. In my prior school, for example, there was really only one science class, and if you really wanted to explore more deeply, there weren’t any other electives. So, I was flipping through the Exeter coursebook and saw that we have things like quantum mechanics or three courses on astronomy, and I practically started drooling. Then, when I arrived in my lower fall, I struggled a lot in Harkness. At my old school, I didn’t ever have to engage in back-and-forth conversation in English, and I was quiet, so I had to change the way I thought about learning. Now in my senior year, I’m a lot more confident around the Harkness table, and I truly enjoy participating and sharing my ideas with others,” Vohra pondered.

Vohra is also a resident of Front Street Hall, where he serves as prep proctor. Lower Joseph Kim, also a member of Front Street, discussed his experience with Vohra as proctor. “He’s simply a nice and casual person, and he never disappoints when he’s interacting with people in the dorm. Everyone knows that he’s intelligent, has a friendly personality, and that you can always have conservation with him. For example, he has phrases written on his door by others that say things like ‘best proctor’ and ‘favorite senior.’”

Kim continued, “For me personally, Ishaan has given me physics advice and helped me while I’m learning. He’s absolutely selfless with his time, always willing to lend a hand, especially to younger students. I’ve never once seen him get angry or annoyed.”  

“Front Street is a fairly small dorm with only 30 guys or so,” Vohra reflected. “I have the job of Prep Proctor, so I live on the top floor with the freshmen. I think they’re all having a great time at Exeter and we have a really tight-knit community. Sometimes, we’ll be in the common room, watching something like the Superbowl, and we just chat, eat snacks, talk about life, and everything else that teenage boys do with their friends.”

Around campus as a whole, Vohra is universally known to be as intelligent as he is incredibly humble and playful.

“Everyone knows Ishaan is always working on one physics project or another, but he sometimes always finds time to crack jokes, even though he can seem serious from the outside,” senior Nick Lin commented.

Senior Daria Ivanova reflected, “As I got to know Ishaan more, it became immediately clear that he was extremely smart, but also incredibly modest. In that humility, he’s been willing to share everything with the people around him. In his dorm, I know he’s very generous with his time and people look up to him. He also has quite a strong, though occasionally questionable, sense of humor.”

“It is impossible not to understate how warmhearted and uplifting Ishaan is. He has helped me countless times when I’ve encountered difficulties, and he’s always been incredibly humble and supportive,” upper Shiqiao Zhang said. 

“Some things I really like about Ishaan are his curiosity, his humbleness, and his willingness to help others. He has a wealth of knowledge that he is always happy to share, but he never seems to be complacent of what he knows. He genuinely cares about understanding subjects like physics to the fullest. In the classes we took together, he would often stay after class with me to ask questions or continue an unfinished class discussion as we walked back to our dorms,” alumna Aubrey Zhang ‘22 said. 

“If you’ve had deep conversations with Ishaan before, you’d know that he believes his purpose in life is to be fulfilled,” upper Michael Lu commented. “He has told me how he understands the difference between pleasure and fulfillment. He’s also able to construct meaningful points whenever we get into debates about the purpose of different science fields, to the point that I’ve even been occasionally convinced by him.”

Vohra is also easily one of the most accomplished physics students in the school. He serves as co-head of Physics Club, where he regularly gives lectures and competes in USIYPT (United States Invitational Young Physicists Tournament) competitions, spearheaded the effort in the Beamline For Schools international competition last year which allowed a group of Exonians to test scientific theories at the CERN particle accelerator in Switzerland, and has won numerous competitions outside of school. 

“When I first got here during international student orientation, I quickly became friends with Ishaan and walked pretty much everywhere together. He would tell me about all the cool physics projects he had done at all the universities, and how he had published papers on things like neutrinos. I thought: ‘I can’t believe every Exeter kid is going to be like this.’ And then I realized that was not the case, and that he is quite the special person,” Lin reflected. 

“I’ve taught Ishaan in a few courses: AP physics, quantum mechanics, relativity & black holes,”  Instructor in Science James DiCarlo commented. “In all cases he brought an incredible amount of understanding to the table and yet didn’t set himself up as an unapproachable guru. I was impressed with his curiosity and his ability to see relations between different and seemingly unrelated topics. When we were discussing the magnetic behavior of quantum particles, Ishaan noticed a similarity between the way we discussed ‘spin flipping’ and what particle physicists call ‘neutrino oscillation.’ He’s always making connections.”

“Ishaan loves the adventure,” Instructor in Science Michael McLaughlin said. “He could run through a lengthy, painstaking lab procedure leading to one terrible set of data after another and he’d still walk away with that giant, contagious smile on his face. While the rest of us are thinking: ‘Who is this guy?!’” 

“I remember being surprised that we had someone who knew so much about and has done research on quantum physics right here in our school. The first time I met him was when I was a prep and I went to science bowl, and it was just very useful to have someone so talented at every subject,” senior Alan Bu said. 

DiCarlo reflected on his first experience with Vohra. “I first met Ishaan when he was submitting the first proposal for the CERN competition as a lower (they didn’t win that year, but did receive an honorable mention.). Somehow, Ishaan had learned to use some technical simulation software for determining the interactions between subatomic particles and matter.  He was surprisingly knowledgeable (for a lower!) about these things, which I would think would normally be in the realm of graduate students and professionals.”

As Physics Club cohead, Vohra participates in the community in many ways. “Coming into Exeter, Physics Club was actually the first one I ever attended,” Vohra said. “I thought it was really interesting how the club was divided into three groups: lecture group, competition group, and USIYPT group. In the lecture group, the coheads can give presentations about something they’re interested in, and anyone can attend and ask questions. In the competition group, the coheads give out problems of the style of Physics Olympiad. And then, in the USIYPT group, we work on longer-term problems which involve developing theoretical models as a group and testing experiments.”

Vohra continued, “Of these, my favorite is giving lectures. My most recent lecture was on lasers and tons of people showed up and asked amazing questions. Physics is often scary to many people because it can seem very distant from our normal world. What has been key for me is building up from solid scientific fundamentals and guiding everyone along to the more abstract mathematical ideas, because everyone has intuition for how these things work. USIYPT has also been really fun, and we actually came second this year with our study of inelastic magnetic collisions.” 

“USIYPT is essentially a physics debate,” M. Lu explained. “Though it might seem counterintuitive, science is always debatable, at least the kind that we’re doing. I’m also a cohead of Physics Club, and we went to the competition in winter term and did very well.”

M. Lu continued, “I think Ishaan is good at it because you can tell he actually thinks deeply about the philosophy of physics, that he is truly fulfilled by it.”

Instructor in Science Scott Saltman explored his thoughts on Vohra’s problem-solving abilities., “In my role as Physics Club advisor, I myself have seen how he really dives deep into problems and his willingness to work with something that’s unknown where he doesn’t see a path forward, to use the available tools to approach something that’s very new.”

“He held another Physics Club lecture about the relationship between gravity and quantum mechanics, which was once again of fantastic quality,” Ivanova said.

In 2023, Vohra and a few of his classmates made up Exeter’s team “Myriad Magnets” in the Beamline for Schools competition. Alongside teams from Pakistan and the Netherlands, Vohra’s team won out against nearly 400 proposals representing 68 countries.

“Ishaan spearheaded the winning proposal for CERN’s Beamline for Schools competition.  He dug around to find out what particular types of proposals might be favorably received by the judges. Exeter’s team came up with a clever mechanical solution for bending a beam of high-energy charged particles. He was the ‘team leader’ of the group,” DiCarlo said.

“I attended the on-campus presentation on the ‘magnet mangle,’ which was the basis of their project.  Ishaan was a part of the team that traveled to CERN to test their device. I remember asking a question as time ran out and later opening my email to see a long-form response from Ishaan. He loves engaging in science—researching, questioning, and sharing,” McLaughlin commented.

“Essentially, students from all over the world submit research proposals and, if they win, they get to perform the actual experiment at the particle accelerator. There were seven or eight people who worked really hard to get a really good paper done, and they ended up being one of the three winners. He clearly has ambition and is proactive, but he never bragged about the competition, even though he was the key to making it happen,” Bu reflected.

“Ishaan was the one who originally brought it up,” senior Will Lu, who worked on the project, said. “He clearly has a lot of ideas and ambition which, in this high pressure environment, can often turn into stepping on others, but his curiosity is so pure that that never happened.”

“The first year we tried it, we had really terrible time management, completely last-minute. But, we threw something together and managed to place in the final short list of the top 24 teams in the world. After that, we realized that we had a shot, if only we could be more creative and prepare more. So, the next year, we started a lot earlier and locked in. We read hundreds of different papers, searching for specific areas in the world of particle physics where we could understand the frontiers of the science. What we ended up deciding on was a radially and rotationally adjustable magnetic mangle, which is just a fancy way of saying we put a magnet into a particle accelerator beam such that it can be adjusted in certain ways that makes it useful for bending and focusing beams in different ways. In other words, it makes for a much more efficient way of manipulating particles,” Vohra described. 

Vohra continued, “In addition to the technology, there were really smart grad students and processors and engineers who encouraged us and provided advice the whole way. The facilities themselves were amazing—it kind of looks like a military bunker, to be honest. By the end of our time there, we did manage to gather some preliminary results and demonstrate that our design did work, largely due to Isabella Vessely’s and Peter Morand’s engineering contributions. In the future, we’re looking to see if we could go to lower-energy accelerators here in the US to get more data and publish it.”

Finally, Vohra is constantly doing further extracurricular projects on the side. “One thing I heard about Ishaan is that he was simulating with a computer program the interaction of certain quantum particles. Apparently, there wasn’t a program that could do it well before, so he published it, and it seems like it was very helpful for researchers, because now they have something hands-on to simulate experiments with,” Bu said.

“Last summer Ishaan worked his way into an internship at FermiLab, doing more of the particle interaction simulations that he learned as a Lower.  He’s also a ‘collaborator’ on the DUNE project (Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment) which is investigating the outer limits of the Standard Model of particle physics. I’d be surprised if there are any other highschool students involved to the depth that Ishaan is,” DiCarlo commented.

In his free time, Vohra loves to produce electronic music. “Electronic music is another major passion of mine, and that was something I began to take an interest in while I was in the UK, which has a great electronic music scene. Over time, I transitioned from simply listening to making it myself. I started putting my music up on different platforms and participating in songwriting competitions, which has been going really well. I’m the co-head of Electronic Music Club, and we meet and try to teach people the skills of how to produce and songwrite in different ways,” Vohra said. 

“Ishaan has genuinely taken advantage of nearly everything that we offer at Exeter in electronic music,” Instructor in Music Eric Schultz commented. “There’s a nighttime music class called Modern Music Making, which is essentially an open-ended class for music producers of all experience levels. Ishaan has taken that every term since he’s been here. And, even though he’s one of the more advanced and accomplished students in the class, he’s also one of the most enthusiastic supporters of everybody else there.”

Schultz continued, “Beyond that, I know he’s released at least two tracks that have been released through a record label in a professional setting. He’s taken every music technology daytime course that’s offered here, which has been recording and mixing advanced music production. Additionally, he and Anthony Yu took a 999 together on an advanced music programming language, and their final project was an interactive sound installation in the lobby of the music building, and that was completely awesome. He started the Electronic Music Club and has been the president of it for the last two years. To my knowledge, he has placed multiple times in the International Songwriting Competition, and he entered into and won the Phillips Exeter Composition Competition this year as well. This, all during his work in the sciences.”

“I know he posts his music in a bunch of different places,” Lin said. “I’ll plug him—his YouTube is ‘Eleron,’ and he remixes a bunch of songs on there.”

“Ishaan and I were both in Modern Music Making one term, and of course he’s very talented at it, so he showed me a bunch of good beats for EDM. He’s just very passionate about it, and you can always find him bopping to some beats on the side,” senior Ryan Manley said. 

“In terms of his personal style, you have to remember that electronic music has something like eight million sub-genres,” Schultz remarked. “With that being said, I would say that Ishaan is mainly interested in music that revolves around ‘house.’ It’s essentially beat-driven dance 

music that often features sampled vocals—think boots and cats and boots and cats. But I wouldn’t necessarily paint him into that corner; he experiments with all sorts of music and could probably bullet point three well-known artists for each sub-genre.”

“Dr. Schultz has been really encouraging of me continuing to participate in sharing my music with the world through record labels and things like that. He’s an inspiration to me because it’s really rare to be able to work with a faculty member who not only produces their own music, but is readily willing to share their knowledge of songwriting with other students. I myself have never had an electronic music mentor like that and Dr. Schultz really kept that passion burning for me,” Vohra said.

“He leads primarily through enthusiasm,” Schultz said. “He is extremely supportive of those who are just starting out. If someone says something like ‘I’m building this drum track, but I don’t know what to do next,’ he’ll go right over there to help. A few times that I’m aware of, he’s even opened up the file of his music and showed it on a screen in a presentation format, and demonstrated how he created it, what he was thinking about, why he made certain creative decisions, and people have asked questions about it.”

“He really does love producing music,” W. Lu said. “I know Physics Club and whatnot gets most of the press, but Ishaan is so much more than that. His electronic music endeavors are incredible, and I wish more people knew about it.”

But, when Ishaan is not in the science lab or the music-making studio, you may well find him on the courts. “Playing squash and badminton is another way I hang out with my friends. I go to Badminton Club on the weekend, which I’m a cohead of, and it’s as much for socializing as it is exercising. I started playing when I was in Canada, completely from scratch, and my parents would drive me an hour away to a place I could play a couple times a week for years, and gradually, I got better,” Vohra reflected.

“I met Ishaan in my prep year on the squash team,” upper Byran Huang said. “We were around the same level so we practiced a lot together. He was always super outgoing and energetic, and we would always play Clash Royale together after squash practice, which was a great bonding experience. Now, of course, he’s a lot busier as a senior, but whenever I’ve asked him for any advice, he’s always been there.”

“He’s actually surprisingly good at badminton,” Lin said. “Something like one or two years ago, there was a guy named Nicholas Chu here who was something like top seven in the country. For reference, Ishaan could play against him and actually have a chance.”

Vohra continued, “Nick Chu did teach me a lot of tricks and tips and helped me improve my game. We played a lot on the weekend and during the week whenever I asked. Of course, with him being as good as he is, I got mostly destroyed, but I could get a few points here and there. Either way, he taught me how to really love the game, and now that’s what I like to do in my capacity as cohead of Badminton Club: spread love for the game.”

Quiet, yet funny; humble, yet intelligent beyond his years; focused, and yet with so many diverse interests. In just three years, Ishaan has managed to garner the respect of the entire school and brought glory to Exeter by serving as a catalyst for Exeter’s EDM scene, traveling halfway around the world to leave Exeter’s mark on a particle accelerator, and being an unfailing beacon of stability and mentorship.   Indeed, if you were brave enough to enter that physics lab and ask everyone, as they tinker away at their experiments, who they think is the most talented physicist in the school, all except one would surely answer: Ishaan. 

“I think he has shown people that you can pursue prodigious physics research, release your music to actual labels, have a brilliant personality, and still be humble and maintain a balanced lifestyle. In spite of all that he does, Ishaan is almost always relaxed, and always has plenty of time to spend with friends. He knows how to pursue the things you love passionately and also be chill and have fun at the same time, which is a really valuable quality,” Ivanova said.

S. Zhang contemplated, “I look up to Ishaan as a role model both for academic pursuits and for life philosophy. He has a clear idea of his path forward and works diligently toward his aspirations. With confidence and determination, he achieves everything that he deserves to achieve.”

“I want to express my thanks to Exeter,” Vohra concluded. “Exeter has been a place where I’ve been able to cultivate my interests and meet people who will certainly do great things for the world. I just want to say thank you.”

“He’s exceptionally humble. He truly doesn’t think he’s better than anyone else, he has such a generous spirit, and he’s a very curious, deep, intense learner. I’m going to miss him so much. He’s the sort of person I wish all music students in all genres would model in terms of humility and work ethic and openness to learn new styles. He’s a tremendous person, and I know he’s going to do great,” Schultz reflected.