{"id":6749,"date":"2026-05-14T13:09:45","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T17:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/?p=6749"},"modified":"2026-05-14T13:09:45","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T17:09:45","slug":"spreadsheets-to-stardom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/spreadsheets-to-stardom\/","title":{"rendered":"Spreadsheets to Stardom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How Undergraduate Research Experience Prepared Actress and Author Aria Mia Loberti<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

By Molly Stevens \u201820<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Acclaimed actress, newly published author, and UNICEF Ambassador Aria Mia Loberti (\u201920) is still at the beginning of her career. But the University of Rhode Island (URI) alumna credits much of her success to the plethora of her cross-disciplinary research opportunities as an undergraduate student.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At URI, Loberti\u2019s focus was to research as much as she could, in as many subjects as she could. Her resume features academic awards, conference presentations, and peer-reviewed papers in academic journals\u2014all before she graduated URI in 2020. Her efforts earned her a
prestigious US\/UK Fulbright Award, which funded her master of research in ancient rhetoric at Royal Holloway, University of London. Upon completion of the program, she began a doctorate in the same subject at The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State). It seemed as if Loberti was on a fast- track to an academic career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWithout\nmy research\nbackground\nI wouldn\u2019t have\nknown where\nto begin.\u201d<\/blockquote>Aria Mia Loberti<\/cite><\/div><\/section><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

But shortly into her time at Penn State, Loberti\u2019s path shifted. She was chosen from a global search to play the lead role in Netflix\u2019s adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel All The Light We Cannot See. Loberti\u2019s performance was widely praised by critics. The World War II set miniseries, which also starred Mark Ruffalo and Hugh Laurie, went on to be the number one show in 50 countries and was celebrated with Golden Globe and Emmy nominations. For her role, Loberti won a Rising Star Award at the Toronto International Film Festival and an Entertainment Weekly Breaking Big Award. She was nominated for Best Breakthrough Performance at the Film Independent Spirit Awards.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Aria Mia Loberti \u201820<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cWithout my research background,\u201d Loberti says, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have known where to begin. I had never acted, and I had no acting training. So, I prepared the way I knew how: with a visit to the library and a couple big spreadsheets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loberti researched historical accounts of the Nazi occupation of France, where the story is set. She listened to radio recordings from the period and dug up archival photographs and interviews. She also spent time understanding the psychology and development of her character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe all have foods or scents or even phrases that trigger a core memory or experience that shaped us,\u201d she says. \u201cOn top of my historical research, I tried to find these for my character. When I got to set, I let all of my research go so I could embody a character without overintellectualizing. I\u2019ve streamlined this process quite a bit now, but all characters think, respond, even walk differently than I do, since their experiences and upbringing are different to my own.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In just two years, Loberti transitioned from a budding academic to a breakout actress. After All The Light\u2019s<\/em> success, she went on to star in the Children\u2019s and Family Emmy award-winning The Spiderwick Chronicles<\/em> in 2024 and appeared in the series Grey\u2019s Anatomy<\/em>. Loberti also uses her platform for advocacy, working as a UNICEF ambassador to promote children\u2019s literacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Aria Mia Loberti (\u201920) University of Rhode Island, alumna credits much of her success to the plethora of her cross-disciplinary research opportunities as an undergraduate student.<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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According to Loberti, her new career path is more tightly connected to her research background than one might think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs an undergrad, all I knew was that I was interested in understanding what makes us human, why we do the things we do, why our culture is the way it is,\u201d Loberti says. \u201cI had so many questions that could be tackled by biology, philosophy, communication, math, politics, physics\u2026 I couldn\u2019t pick just one lens to examine the world through.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loberti\u2019s research projects at URI reflected this, ranging from understanding paradigm shifts in the higher education system, bridging the work of philosophers Martin Heidegger and Charles Sanders Pierce, studying human-guide dog relations, designing inclusive pedagogy for biology students, analyzing classical liberalism in economics, and studying how deep machine learning models can assist malaria vector surveillance. Four of these projects yielded co-authored papers published in peer-reviewed academic journals. Loberti was a URI coastal and environmental fellow, a URI Arts and Sciences fellow, and a URI science and engineering fellow. She received the URI Excellence Award for Undergraduate Research \u2014the only student to receive the award as a sophomore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When it came time to apply to graduate school in 2020, Loberti decided to focus on rhetoric since it felt like an amalgamation of everything she studied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am interested in how our words have power to shape the world around us,\u201d she says. \u201cI hoped that focus would help me answer my questions, but it wasn\u2019t until I got cast in All the Light that I realized I could use my research background to reach people around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her work transcends the screen. In October 2025, Loberti launched her first children\u2019s picture book, I Am Ingrid, through Scholastic Publishing, the largest publisher of children\u2019s books in the world. The same research-based practice she uses to approach acting
applies to her writing, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I Am Ingrid is a heartwarming, funny story that educates kids about service animals. While at URI, Loberti researched the bond between service animals and their human partners through a communication lens. To prepare for writing I Am Ingrid, she revisited that research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWriting was always my biggest childhood dream,\u201d says Loberti, \u201cand it is now a major part of my business plan. I have multiple manuscripts in the works that are close to my heart.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Loberti still, however, feels insecure about her unconventional start to her career. She tries to use her unique perspective as a strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat helped me change careers so abruptly was being able to understand people,\u201d she says. \u201cActing and writing are both all about understanding humanity, as a collective and individually. When I tell people my acting and writing career has been built on the back of my research background, they often look surprised. But the truth is that every role I inhabit or book I write owes something to my work as an undergraduate researcher at URI.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I tell people my acting and writing career has been built on the back of my research background, they often look surprised. But the truth is that every role I inhabit or book I write owes something to my work as an undergraduate researcher at URI.\u201d<\/blockquote>Aria Mia Loberti<\/cite><\/div><\/section>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Undergraduate Research Experience Prepared Actress and Author Aria Mia Loberti By Molly Stevens \u201820 Acclaimed actress, newly published author, and UNICEF Ambassador Aria Mia Loberti (\u201920) is still at the beginning of her career. But the University of Rhode Island (URI) alumna credits much of her success to the plethora of her cross-disciplinary research […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5436,"featured_media":6803,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[35,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-momentum-spring-26-body","category-momentum-spring-26-featured"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5436"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6749"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6812,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6749\/revisions\/6812"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/momentum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}