- Kaylee Cunningham reaches millions of online viewers by making nuclear energy fun and easy to understand.
- Cunningham will become the first person in her family to earn a doctorate and the first student to complete an online Ph.D. from the UF Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
- After earning degrees from UF and MIT, she conducted her doctoral research on nuclear fuels remotely while working as a research assistant at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Known as “Ms. Nuclear Energy” on TikTok, Kaylee Cunningham has racked up 2.8 million likes for her clips on engineering topics.
At age 26, she is also accumulating numerous firsts: the first in her family to be known as “doctor” and the first student at UF to complete an online Ph.D. from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering this December.
“I am the soon-to-be first doctor in my family,” said Cunningham, who is originally from Palm Beach County, Florida, and earned a bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering from UF in 2022. “My dad was the first in his family to graduate high school. To make that leap, and not only go to college, graduate college, go to grad school and then, not just stop at a master’s, but go all the way through to the end of the Ph.D., is something that’s really special for my family.”