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Tepe Catori was always amazed by the natural world and with breaking it down.

It started with objects in nature, flowers and bird lodging and an obsession with knowing

their names.

I love to memorize the name of the flower on the street.

As he grew older, he started breaking down his natural world into smaller and smaller

components.

You can go all the way down to the quark and the leptone and yeah, I find it really fascinating.

Quarks and leptons, some of these subatomic particles that combine to form everything

we all, you, me, Tepe, interact with, thus began Tepe's journey to become a particle physicist.

To study the world in the smallest components known to humankind, it's a journey that would

eventually take him to different continents as he continued his studies.

I came to the point that like, man, like even I know like all the name of the flower in

Japan, maybe I can't talk people in the rest of the world because maybe there's a different

name in America or you know.

And the United States is one of those far-flung places he went to.

He got a PhD in high energy physics from Indiana University, Bloomington.

Then he headed to Illinois to study neutrinos at the US Department of Energy's Fermi National

Accelerator Laboratory or Fermi Lab.

But outside his particle physics work in the lab, Tepe ventured into the city, looking

for community.

Yeah, I met a lot of people in Chicago just walking around.

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