Science Speaker Series - Featuring 2024 MMA NSF-REU Astronomy Interns

The MMA’s National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (NSF-REU) interns will present their research on everything from finding baby stars to understanding how galaxies grow over time and how dark matter influences galaxy cluster collisions.

The MMA’s Maria Mitchell Observatory operates the NSF-REU program each summer and has done so for decades. The program, funded by a generous grant from the National Science Foundation, allows the MMA to bring six top undergraduate students to the MMA each summer who are selected out of a pool of approximately 380 applicants from around the United States. This summer’s NSF-REU interns and their research presentations are:

Naija Bruckner (Rice University): Probing Circumgalactic Medium Turbulence with Synthetic Absorption

Sophia Davis (University of Michigan): Shining the X-ray light on Planetary Nebulae in Globular Clusters

Jillian Epstein (Cornell University): Searching for X-ray Counterparts of Protostellar Cores

Fiona Lopez (Texas A&M University): Understanding the Interplay between Dust, Gas, and Stars in High Redshift Galaxies with ALMA and JWST

Nicolas Mazziotti (University of Arizona): Exploring Dark Matter and Galaxy Clusters

Gada Tefera (Pomona College): Investigating the Impact of sub-DLAs on the Neutral Hydrogen Mass Density of the Universe