Outreach

Syracuse University Research in Physics (SURPh) Program

For the last three summers (2022-2024) I have been a mentor for a total of six Syracuse City School District high school students that participated in the SURPh program (now called SUPER-Tech SHIP) hosted by professors in the department of physics at Syracuse University. Each summer, two students worked together on a project studying the tidal disruption of stars by suppermassive black holes. I worked with the students on understanding the properties and evolution of stars using the Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA) stellar evolution software and Mathematica for data analysis. The students then studied the rate at which stellar debris returned to the black hole once the star was tidally destroyed using a combination of analytical and computational (smoothed-particle hydrodynamics) methods. Recently, the projects from summer 2022 and 2023 culminated in a published paper in the Astrophysical Journal Letters with ALL FOUR SURPh STUDENTS!

During the program this summer I also organized and led a week-long computational bootcamp for all 24 students participating in the program where I introduced the students to computational tools that are crucial for conducting research, including: utilizing the command line (bash scripting) and data analysis with Python.

Home Town Outreach

Having the opportunity to go back to my home town each year and talk with the high school physics class has been extremely special to me. When I was in their shoes, I didn’t know that pursuing a career in research was a possibility and, as someone that (marginally) excelled in STEM subjects, I assumed that the best career choice for me was a degree in engineering. I quickly realized that physics was my true passion and even found out that I could make a career out of it! I have really enjoyed being able to talk with the students about STEM research, what it entails, and my personal experience as someone with at least somewhat of a shared experience with them.