Undergraduate Research

My Undergraduate Research Story

I have been passionate about undergraduate research since the start of my still-short career, thanks to the huge impact undergraduate research had on my life.  My first-year of undergrad I struggled to find stable footing. I felt surrounded by people who I perceived to be far better prepared than I was and I was struggling to internalize the concepts presented in lectures. I found what was missing in Undergraduate research, as part of the Freshman Research Initiative (FRI), specifically in the White Dwarf group led by Don Winget and Mike Montgomery (https://fri.cns.utexas.edu/research-streams/white-dwarf-stars). Learning about physics concepts, old and new, throughout this program provided a tangible link between my internal self and the physics content I was learning. Over time, I became engrossed (and obsessed...) with physics. I think the fact that my yearly GPA increased monotonically, despite course becoming objectively more demanding, emphasizes the personal growth that was onset by early Freshman Research.

As part of a "giving back" mentality, I have subsequently introduced novel undergraduate research focused events into the departments of which I have been a part. At UT Austin, while the Astronomy Students' Association president, I introduced the idea of an "Undergraduate Research Month" where we would invite undergraduates to give half-length talks (the usual format being a professor giving a full length talk) to inspire and encourage their peers to not be afraid to try it out. This event seems to have been adopted by the broader Astronomy department as an Undergraduate Research Week.

At UChicago, I introduced with Julia Brazas the department's first-ever course on undergraduate research after noticing a gap in their undergraduate curriculum and surpsingly poor outcomes given the department's prestige.  I collaborated with Dr. Clarke Esmerian to develop and teach the material. In the first half of the course, students are guided through a wide range of topics such as: an introduction to python, fourier analysis of variable stars, photometry with python, spectroscopic reductions with IRAF,  Bayesian statistics, and numerical methods. The latter portion of the course focused on independent, miniature research projects the covered a diverse range of topics in Computational (Esmerian-led) and Observational (Hoyt-led) projects. The Syllabus can be found here, along with the broader GitHub repo: https://github.com/cesmerian/PracResearchIntro_S18/blob/master/pract_intro2res_syllabus_students.pdf

Student Mentorship

My passion encouraging undergraduate research also extended into direct mentorship. As an undergraduate I served as a senior undergraduate mentor to more junior undergraduates coming up in the FRI program. At UChicago, I directly mentored two undergraduate students on large, impactful projects, culminating in a first author publication from each of them (can be found in my CV on the Publications page). One student is now a newly minted PhD (from my alma mater🤘 congratulations!) and the other is successfully in Astro graduate school and doing well.

I enjoy working with students who want to learn, be creative, and take their time to grow into their own unique path as a scientist. I am not the type of mentor who will spoon feed answers, as I strongly believe such mentorship practices drastically inhibit the long-term creativity of scientists.