Kiralee Hayashi

Hayashi was born and raised in Hawaii.^[1] She is of Japanese, Portuguese, English & Irish descent.^[1] Her success as a gymnast gained her a full scholarship to UCLA,^[1] where she studied neuroscience.^[3]

While at UCLA she did research in the Paul Thompson's group at Laboratory of Neuro Image (LONI). She co-authored several papers on neuroscience topics.^[4]

She has a low Erdős number of just three through the publication Brain surface parameterization using Riemann surface structure which was coauthored by Shing-Tung Yau.^[5] Yau published On sampling Markov chains together with Ronald Graham, and Graham authored On Sum of Fibonacci Numbers together with Paul Erdős.^[6]

While at UCLA she was also a notable gymnast.^[3] One of the most highly recruited freshmen her graduating year. She garnered 9 All-American titles (both first and second team). And was a National Balance Beam champion. She was Pac-10 gymnast of the year in 1999 and Pac-10 Conference Medalist^[a] for 1998-99, her senior year.^[7][8] And was a two-time Pac-10 All-Academic selection. Hayashi was a finalist for the AAI American Award, given annually to the nation's most outstanding all-around senior gymnast.