Astronomy Summer Research Teams Take Physics Colloquia By Storm

Amherst College Science Center

Updated: Oct 16, 2020

On September 8th and 15th, the Physics and Astronomy Department colloquium showcased the summer research of 21 Amherst students during a series of “Flash Talks.” These three-minute presentations gave the students the opportunity to demonstrate their newfound knowledge and share their summer experiences. Despite COVID-19, students worked at a variety of labs throughout the country remotely, doing research ranging from parsing observations of some of the largest and most violent phenomena in the galaxy to microscopic explorations of human cells.

Over the next few weeks, Astronomy Department Editor William Balmer (that’s me) will be publishing interviews of six astronomy students who presented their summer research at the colloquium.

Our first interviews were published 9/22/2020, and can be read here. We interviewed Beck Dacus ‘22, Cailin Plunkett ‘23, and Huichen “Will” Wang ‘23 on their work with their “accretion database.”

Our next interview was published 9/30/2020, and can be read here. We interviewed Khalid Mohamed ’22 on his work leading a team of Amherst students to develop a web-tool for a new instrument on the Magellan Telescope.

Our third interview was published 10/9/2020, and can be read here. We interviewed Lena Treiber ’23E on her summer research at Yale University, X-ray Binaries, and her new publication.

Our fourth interview was published 10/16/2020, and can be read here. We interviewed Joe Palmo ’21 on his summer research at NASA with the SARP program, where he monitored chemicals in the atmosphere above California.