Undergraduate Research Project - Career Development - 6pts

 

This summer I had the wonderful opportunity to work with Northwestern University's CIERA Department in astrophysics. I specifically worked with star-galaxy classification where I was tasked to find the inconsistencies between different surveys that had their own computational methods of classifying stars and galaxies. The objective was to provide astronomers with the proper classifications of dim objects to help localize fast radio bursts or FRBs.  I developed a close relationship with my mentors, Dr. Sunil Simha and Dr. Wen-fai Fong, where they guided me through the different databases, SQL, ADQL, Python, and the PATH program which is used to localize FRBs. I was able to determine the biases between the DECaLS, HSC, and Pan-STARRS surveys. I also ran a model being developed by a graduate student at Northwestern that uses the pretense that most far objects on the sky are galaxies to classify stars and galaxies.  After giving my research presentation to the CIERA department, I was provided with feedback that will push me toward completing my project. I am continuing this project by creating a code that runs this new model, then consecutively runs PATH to increase the likelihood of assigning FRBs to their proper hosts. This opportunity has shown me that I do indeed want to pursue a career in astrophysics but would like to pivot to another sector of the discipline. I have thoroughly enjoyed learning about FRBs and looking into the classification of stars and galaxies, but I would like to turn my focus toward cosmology and/or black holes. Both of these topics I was able to learn more about through a series of talks I attended as a part of my research project.

Shelah Boyd