Most people spend high school trying to figure out where they belong. Alex Wei  spent part of his trying to discover possible new planets. What started as a childhood fascination with the night sky eventually grew into a deep interest in astronomy, astrophysics, and astrophotography. From photographing the Northern Lights in Alaska to capturing dark skies in the outskirts of Beijing and sunsets in Xinjiang, Alex has taken his camera almost everywhere he travels. That same curiosity eventually led him to develop a machine learning model capable of identifying potential exoplanets from telescope data, which helped him discover 18 new potential exoplanet candidates and earned him a trip to the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair. But beyond the research itself, Alex is drawn to the bigger questions behind it all: the mystery of space, the search for meaning, and the ideas that connect science and philosophy. It is probably why his favorite class at Webb ended up being Advanced Studies Existentialism, where writers like Albert Camus and Haruki Murakami felt just as engaging to him as astrophysics. As he heads to Columbia University next year to study physics, there is a decent chance Alex will either discover something groundbreaking or start a 1 a.m. debate about the meaning of existence.