Xing was born in Cleveland, OH and first attended Highland Park ISD schools in fifth grade. She is a National Merit Program Scholarship award recipient and a semifinalist in the U.S. Presidential Scholars Program.
As a school ambassador, Xing says, “I love giving tours of the school to new students and alumni and getting to connect with different generations of Scots.” Outside of school, Xing has dedicated time to serving her larger Dallas community, engaging in volunteer projects at the Dallas Public Libraries and at the Dallas Arboretum.
Michelle Xing is planning to study computer science and mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the fall. Xing was born in Cleveland, OH and first started attending Highland Park ISD schools in 5th grade. She is a National Merit Program Scholarship award recipient and a semifinalist in the U.S. Presidential Scholars Program.
With a strong interest in the STEM fields, Xing has been a member of the Highland Park High School math and science teams since her freshman year and has also served as the captain of both. She enjoys participating in University Interscholastic League (UIL) and Texas Math and Science Coaches Association (TMSCA) competitions with the teams, and in her senior year, she won the TMSCA 6A Top Gun Award for having the best overall performance across the Number Sense, Calculator, Mathematics, and Science competition categories. Individually, she also participates in the American Mathematics Competitions (AMC) and has qualified to take the American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) all four years of high school.
In the summer before her senior year, Xing delved into biomedical research to further pursue her interests in the sciences. She worked on a research project concerning the role of the CXCR4 protein in small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) and performed a gene knockdown of the CXCR4 gene in two SCLC cell lines using CRISPR/Cas9 technology. “From reading the news about Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier winning the Nobel Prize for their work on CRISPR technology to learning about the tool in AP Biology class, I have always had a fascination with gene editing. I was super excited when I got to actually work with CRISPR myself in the lab over the summer,” she says.
In addition to her academic pursuits, Xing is involved in a variety of community service activities, serving as the president of the Asian Culture Association (ACA) and as a HPHS ambassador. Regarding the ACA, her favorite memory is helping plan the first annual Highland Park CultureFest in 2022, a community-wide celebration of the diverse cultures in the district. As a school ambassador, she says, “I love giving tours of the school to new students and alumni and getting to connect with different generations of Scots.” Outside of school, Xing has dedicated time to serving her larger Dallas community, engaging in volunteer projects at the Dallas Public Libraries and at the Dallas Arboretum.
In her free time, Xing enjoys playing tennis and was a member of the HPHS varsity tennis team that won the UIL 5A Team Tennis State Championship during her sophomore year.