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 found myself 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). Connecting with new and old physics concepts throughout this program provided a tangible link to the content I was also hearing in lecture.

In the spirit of my undergraduate research driven upbringing,  I have championed undergraduate research regardless of my career stage. While an undergraduate myself at UT Austin, I introduced an "Undergraduate Research Month" for which 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 since 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 dedicated solely to undergraduate research after we noticed a formal research angle was still missing from the undergraduate curriculum at the time.  I collaborated with Dr. Clarke Esmerian to develop and teach the material. In the first half of the course, students were 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 for undergraduate research has also extended into direct student mentorship. As an undergraduate, I served as a senior undergraduate mentor to more junior students 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. Since then, I have mentored students at UC Berkeley through the URAP program.

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.