This January, nine students from CIERA’s summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program presented posters on their research projects at the 229th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Grapevine, Texas. Directed by NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow Aaron Geller, the REU program focuses on connections between astrophysics and other disciplines within CIERA. Students learn computer programming, develop skills in science communication, take field trips, and benefit from career panels in addition to collaborating with faculty on research projects.
The winter meeting of the AAS is the largest gathering of American astronomers each year and includes many opportunities for networking. The students presented the following posters:
| Joseph Arroyo (adviser: Eric Dahl) “Simulating Xenon Bubble Chambers for Dark Matter Detection” |
| Valerie Becker (adviser: Dave Meyer) “HST STIS Observations of Interstellar Chlorine” |
| Michael Bueno (adviser: Shane Larson) “Multi-Messenger Astronomy: White Dwarf Binaries, LISA and GAIA” |
| Joshua Fuhrman (adviser: Fred Rasio) “Exploring Sources of Gravitational Waves From Star Cluster Dynamics” |
| Beverley Lowell (adviser: André de Gouvêa) “Understanding the Earth’s Composition through Neutrino Oscillations” |
| Lupe MacIntosh (adviser: Mel Ulmer) “An Automated Census Of Variable X-Ray Objects in the Direction of Clusters of Galaxies” |
| Noah Rivera (adviser: Michael Schmitt) “Exoplanet Transit Analysis of KIC 8462852” |
| Abraham Teklu (adviser: Alvin Bayliss) “How Mathematics Describes Life” |
| Yuqi Yun (adviser: Vicky Kalogera) “A Fast Method to Predict Distributions of Binary Black Hole Masses with Gaussian Process Regression” |
Learn more about CIERA’s NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program
