 Grand Universe" in a pageant organized by Mrs. Universe in Cebu, Philippines.As an immigrant at the age of 12, Persad started doing research under mentor Eleanor F. Helin at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, in Asteroid Discovery, Origin, and Motion, and at the age of 13, she was a research assistant at the High-temperature Superconductivity Lab at Boston University.At the age of 14, she developed new methods of numerical integration including the "Method of Polygonal Partitions", "Vector Approximation Method", and "Inversion Method".