From Summer Science Program to a Career in Native American Law and Appreciation for Cultural and Artistic Identity: SSP Alum Anthony Jones ‘03

The post SSP Alum Anthony Jones ‘03 first appeared on SSP International.

I started off the day by going to a SWRI lecture bright and early at 9 o clock. Michelle and Raluca  two scientists at SWRI, gave us instructions on how to do data analysis  and to make a start on our Orbit Integration Presentations. We only had three hours to come up with a presentation , so it was a very stressful start to my morning.

After lunch, it was time to present the long term fates of our asteroids. It was very intriguing to see the fate of all our asteroids over the span of 50 million years. I don’t think any of the participants asteroids collide with Earth, so I guess we’re safe for now.

The presentations went by fast and we all headed to the lecture hall where Michelle and Raluca showed us a documentary about the Chelyabinsk meteor. The Chelyabinsk meteor was unpredicted , this made me realise how important astrophysics is in order to predict these meteor strikes. The first step in predicting asteroids or meteor impacts is to  determine their orbits, and I thought to myself, isn’t that  what we were doing for the past five weeks? So I guess we could say that this summer we all contributed to science!

Finally it was time to go to the Talent Show! It had been a long day, but I was more exhilarated rather than exhausted. We were all anxiously practicing our parts for the show before we all took our seats and our MC’s, Siyona and Nikhilesh commenced the night. The show started off with the musical talents, with pianos, violins and guitars. There was some dancing as well. I was a part of the line dancing group. The night started fairly relaxing with the classical piano and the harmonious flute pieces but soon it got chaotic when Lucien and Staś started the tortilla slap challenge, suddenly the scene changed from peaceful, melodious music to tortilla’s flying around the room.

Other highlights of the night were Dr. Rengstorf’s speech on the importance of teachers and Dr. Lê sang a meaningful song by a Vietnamese singer, Trịnh Công Sơn.

The Talent Show ended and I rushed to the computer lab to download all the lecture materials and programming projects, as the reality hit me that we only have one more day left in this program. We all hung out at Domenici for a while, and soon headed back to our dorms.

My name is Hardev and I’m a rising senior at St Caimins Community School in Shannon, Ireland. I love physics, engineering and anything else STEM – related. In my spare time I like to play basketball with my friends and go for walks or runs in the morning.

The post The Talent Show!! first appeared on SSP International.

If you told me, even a week before June 23rd that I’d be running to a class on black holes at 9 in the morning on a sunny Friday morning during the summer, I’d have taken that info and thrown it out the door. But here I am, a month and a couple days into the Summer Science Program(sometime wish it was Summer Sleep Program).

Two hours into a hands on, brain exercise, my boy Sean and I are cracking our heads at some differential equations problem that relates to some celestial entity. I am genuinely tweaking because I’m tryna get this done and play some brawl stars with my homie Joey. But, at least Dr. Le calls time and then gives us the most fascinating talk about not science, but himself. We knew there was some lore in his life, cause his mysterious aura doesn’t go unnoticed. We truly learned about the “gravitational forces” in his life.

And then we’re off, early even today. My def-not favorite TA Lucien and a couple of us start heading towards the Panda Express on campus, the only eatery other than our dining hall on campus. We got some crazy good grub, including my favorite Cream Cheese Rangoons and Veggie Spring Rolls!!! With a stomach full and content, I opened my fortune cookie to top it all off. I open it, and it’s, “You’re gonna gain some confidence or sum.”

…..ermmmm … .as my teammate Tut likes to say….WhAt the SiGMa??? What is this cryptic message?? Like genuinely, anything but, this. Hey I’m grateful, but this is why I don’t find truth in fortune cookies. “To be or not to be?” – Somebody smart, someday, somewhere. But, I eat, and then I drag myself and big boy Max who’s already out sleeping on the table at Panda Express, along with the rest of my homies back to the afternoon session with Dr. Rengstorf.

Right after an amazing AMA session with Dr. R, where he lowkey gave us some crazy life advice that I might take to the grave, my teammates and I eagerly got to work finishing up our last set of images as we finally got a fourth set of observations to look at. We finished that up and finally got our long awaited stickers, nearly completing every part of the sticker chart, something the TA’s kindly put up for us.

And the night started to wrap up soon after a full stomach at dinner, sitting with my other favorite TA, Kathryn and our squad. As we worked hard through the night to get our final code in before our OD report was due the next day But you know the night doesn’t go out without a bang…and a lil crazy stunts. Kevin ended up getting a makeover by my the homies Grace and Siyona. I think he might have ended up becoming their project for their talents, and might become the next model for vogue.

And that’s a wrap on a great day. With only a few more left, I’m going to miss these people and the experiences and memories I’ve gathered. But you know what, that’s life and we’ll remember each other, and look forward to the day we all meet again, with more stories in store. To forever..and beyond!!! – Buzz Lightyear or sum

My name is Nikhilesh and I am a rising senior from Valencia High School in Santa Clarita, California. I love working out, having deep conversations and just messing around in general. But, most importantly, the friends I’ve made at SSP are just something else. It truly has been what they said it would be: An educational experience of a lifetime!!!

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After pausing on the data analysis for our n-body simulations—programs that analyze how our asteroids will move through the solar system over millions of years—we left our code to run overnight and headed back to the dorms. Until curfew, we stayed in the dorm lobby chatting with TAs, watching Spider-Man, and playing cards.

Then, I went back to my dorm and packed a bit before heading to sleep.

A very, very short 5 hour nap later, the 29th officially started with the walk to Corbett and a penultimate breakfast at the high table. (The high table: the one long table in the dining hall. Meant to fit 18, but capable of hosting 22.) Breakfast was interspersed with some last minute talent show prep—poem and Taylor Swift parody writing.

Next up was a short lecture in Domenici, and then back to the Bio Annex for data analysis and slideshow making. Most of my time was spent making a few more animations, and of course, adding color palettes to my graphs (colorsys for the win).

Unfortunately, while trying to make a gif, a suspicious interface was downloaded onto my computer. After the subsequent half an hour of trying to get my computer to open a browser other than Yahoo, I was returned to Google Chrome (thanks, Jalen)!

Because of the exciting Yahoo virus encounter, I had to rush a bit to add my graph to my group’s slideshow. However, with some serious teamwork, we completed our final graphs, broke for lunch, and came back to practice before each group presented. Of course, there was a brief break for more talent show rehearsal between trial slide show runs. (We successfully memorized approximately ten percent of the parody we were singing.)

The main academic event of the day was our presentations, where each group gave a rundown of their asteroid’s eventual fate. For 2012 FN62, we found ejection from the solar system to be the most likely outcome. Of course, there were the 8 out of 156 test clones that plummeted into the sun instead—as everyone found slightly humorous, I found those cases a lot more fun. Each group had only five minutes, so there was a lot of data to run through quite fast.

12 successful presentations later, we headed back to Domenici for a last SWRI lecture before card games and the final dinner at Taos. One last table of students and faculty (although no assigned seats today) and one last set of announcements from Dr. F; it was quite bittersweet.

After dinner, we returned to the dorms, where I still had to finish my poem before the talent show an hour later. Luckily, the poem was successfully written, and everyone made it to Science Hall on time.

The talent show, of course, was one of our final SSP traditions; a perfect cap on a day strangely full of lasts. There were many amazing student (and faculty) performances, from music to paper-tower-building, rock stacking, poem reading, paper-airplane folding, or card tricks. Somehow, the three hours of talents passed very quickly, and by the end of Harry and Ze’s amazing Minecraft-esque final poem, it was already 10 PM (early by SSP standards, I know).

We took one final nighttime walk back from the Bio Annex, and all headed up to the third floor. In an idea that originated somewhere back in week 3, Samantha and Steinnun did my makeup outside of the game room, which led to much giggling (but luckily negligible eye poking). After a few photos, we ventured down to the remains of a soccer game and then recruited a few more people to head out to our dorm lawn and stargaze.

Stargazing was super cool; we saw several meteors (and got bitten by several mosquitos), but mostly just spent a while chatting. By the time we headed back into the dorms, there was just enough time left before curfew for one final game of fish. (Fish: some people have cult movies. SSPers have cult card games.) With a few minutes to spare before curfew, we headed to bed for the second to last time at SSP.

The post NMSU Astro II: Day 34 first appeared on SSP International.

Too late to head to the dining hall, I quickly completed my morning routine and grabbed a muffin for breakfast. 

I listened to music on the way to CHAS with my roommate (ANNA B) whose energy I wish I could reciprocate this morning. Arriving at CHAS, my lab group began working on our paper (it’s due tomorrow!). But after getting our IC50 value checked over, it was determined we would need to redo the entire procedure for the I1 inhibitor (redoing procedures is a frequent occurrence here at SSP. But that’s how we learn!). My skirt would not work for wet lab, so I raced back to the dorms for long pants. When I returned my team re-ran the procedure and achieved a somewhat adequate dose-response curve!

For lunch, I went to Starbucks, which would be vital to get me through the four remaining lectures for the day. My friends and I also explored the farmers market that is on Purdue campus on Thursdays. There is international cuisine, baked goods, flowers, and jewelry available. I enjoyed viewing these objects before being quickly sucked back into the harsh reality of MOE. 

We then moved on to lectures which were special today because it was our first time hearing from our TAs! Lauren discussed ketamine as a treatment option for OCD that could be tested in mice. Then we (mostly unsuccessfully) attempted to make mice (out of mini sheets of paper). 

Our guest speaker following that was a biochemistry researcher from Indiana University. After his engaging lecture about RNA’s significance to the origin of life, we asked questions and enjoyed snacks at the reception. 

We had our usual formal dinner at Ford today and, with Dr. Avard at my table, had engaging conversations about the impending doom our society faces as AI grows more powerful. We decided, for our own safety, that using “please” and “thank you” would be necessary when interacting with ChatGPT. 

As we get closer to the end of the program, we’ve become busier, and so this evening was not free time. After dinner, we headed back to the dorms to change and then back to the great hall (the Harry Potter room) for two more lectures till 10 pm. In the drug mechanisms lecture, Dr. Avard informed us of yet another impending doom: a super bacteria resistant to all antibiotics that would emerge in the coming decades. The second lecture of the night would be about the publication process. We would be humbly surprised to find that researchers pay to publish their work rather than getting paid to do it. Our unrestrained– and often silly– questions, along with the distraction of a plane that incessantly flew above our area, pushed the lecture  20 minutes over. But it was okay since we were outside and the night air made it almost possible to forget I had a paper due in mere hours. 

Somehow, in the midst of this day, I tried to find the time to finish the final report, due at 8 am tomorrow. I worked throughout the day (between lectures and lab and during or before meals) but I knew it would still be a long night trying to finish! Or so I thought! Luckily, my group members had the same idea in mind. By all working on it throughout the day, we were nearly finished. We completed our abstract in 20 minutes and well before curfew. 

Although the day was cumbersome, it ended in triumph. 

– Yohanna 

The post Day 31- DISCLAIMER: written the night before our final report was due. May contain dry sarcasm. (Biochemistry Purdue II) first appeared on SSP International.

After working for about three hours on my research paper, I pivoted to working on MOE, Molecular Modeling Environment, with the rest of my team to compete and submit our modified inhibitor for the inhibitor challenge, which is due at 11 a.m. today. I eventually finished my inhibitor, which has a binding affinity of 11.54, that is surprisingly exemplary compared to the rest of Purdue I and my cohort. Once finished with all the work that needed to be done at the moment, I went to my favorite restaurant at Purdue, Grilled Chicken and Rice (please visit it if you are ever on Purdue’s campus), with all of my friends for the final time. I joked with all of my friends and ate delicious food, which is one of my favorite lunches as I look back on it now.

However, I want to talk about yesterday’s fantastic talent show! I made so many memories, from watching others play musical instruments to a brain-rot circus with all of my goofy friends! The talent show topped off my time at SSP, as all of the participants showed their unique sides of themselves and had fun!

Moving on to the rest of my today, after lunch, I went back to my dorm to finish working on some of the work that needs to be done by tomorrow with the assistance of my teammates, Riya and Elbert. After around two hours, we finished the final report with the collective desire to recuperate after relaxing and heading to dinner. After relaxing by hanging out with some friends and discussing our plans after SSP, we all went down to the main restaurant area in West Layfette to eat ramen. I sadly do not have any pictures of us eating because of how much I enjoyed the food I was eating and the fun time I had with my friends.

After dinner, I went back to the dorms to work with my team on the final paper before going to the fields for an annual field day with the entire cohort and facility. We played all kinds of games, from tug-a-rope to various relay races with randomly selected groups. I had a blast spending my time with the cohort and facility as we spent our final days of SSP together.

After the field day, I went back to the dorms to once again work on my paper. I also spent some time with my friends before going to sleep around 11:30, as usual. I was hyped for the upcoming day!

-Cyrus

The post Day 34- The Final Days (Biochemistry Purdue II) first appeared on SSP International.

We were so happy this morning that we ate pizza and partied until 1. And then we slept. I woke up at 10 by my alarm because I planned a super productive morning practicing piano. But I still felt like partying, so I decided to scroll on my phone for 45 minutes.

Practice eventually started around 12, in which I was trying to shape the last big part of my talent show. With the talent show approaching, all of us are trying to steal the keyboard room even for five minutes (and I am not kidding, because Ian entered the keyboard room when I left, which was 15 minutes before lecture). We probably all thought OD was the end of SSP….  

The afternoon passed fast because we were all happy and happy time flies fast. We were all enjoying our happy coding time, totally reading the worksheet thoroughly. Gio, Ava and I finished our progress check before 5, and then after that, we started admiring our OD report.  

Now, the really interesting things started happening after dinner and the morning after, because we finally started analyzing and interpreting our data with the pressure of the afternoon presentation. Many groups pointed out the periodic oscillations of perihelion and apehelion of our asteroids and potential sources of other behavior, like a sudden change in orbit size (we suspected it was due to approaching planets).

I also started processing our pretty image, taken with SII, H-alpha, OIII filters: 

This is not the final draft, by the way. Photoshop is where all the magic happens. And before I figured out how pixel math works, our image looked horribly….horrible. 

And we can process more/ analyze more of our asteroid when we go back home, because all of it is freeware! 

I also practiced more piano…. While I was doing that, Arrival was played in the classroom. According to Amber, it was horrifying.

That marked the end of our day.

Hi, my name is Jasmine and I’m from China, Dongguan. During my spare time I like sleeping, playing piano, stargazing and post-processing pretty images!

The post End of OD, SwRI First Day  first appeared on SSP International.

Today began like most days, except an hour later. Since yesterday was the last day of lecture, and today is entirely devoted to the OD Report, we got to sleep in an extra hour. Frankly, I didn’t think the report would be too difficult, especially since me and my team had already written six pages of it, but this beast was on an entirely different level. The time between breakfast and midnight was a frenzy with a seemingly impossible amount of both relief that we might actually finish the report, and anxiety due to the realization that I still had to learn how to write down 58 equations onto a document using some markup language only physicists and mathematicians use called LaTeX. Not only that, but the realization that we had to format those equations along with all of the tables, graphics, and text needed to write a semi-legible scientific paper made the evening stressful enough that it could easily be considered a high-risk situation by the American Heart Association for anyone with remotely high blood pressure.

However, after an exhausting number of edits, proofreads, and questions posed to TAs about how to format a LaTeX document to make it into a single column, midnight neared and Dr. Rengstorf started a countdown in the computer lab to kindly remind us of the deadline, which everyone in the building was devoting every ounce of their being towards. Soon, Dr. R started blasting, to the thanks of literally no one in the entire building, the Final Countdown by Europe and the submissions started rolling in. I am glad to say that Team 7, JAG Underpants: International, was one of the first teams to submit, finishing 15 minutes before the deadline. As the clock struck midnight and teams scrambled to submit their reports, there were cheers and tears celebrating the fact that we actually did it, we finished SSP! We defeated the final boss, and the celebrations were set to begin.

Downstairs, the faculty had a surprise for us, pizza AND Lucien’s COKE! We devoured 6 boxes of pizza, and then spent the night, dancing and singing in the classroom, before moving to the dorms and getting shut down by Dr. R and Mrs. Martinez. THE PUNISHMENT: parent phone calls and a shortened curfew. I guess it’s time to fix my sleep schedule. We’re DONE!

P.S. There was a DLC.

Hey, I’m Gio, a rising senior from Vallejo, CA. I really like physics (not astrophysics though thanks to the first pset). I spend my time lifting weights, running, and having fun with my friends.

The post WE’RE DONE! first appeared on SSP International.

Today, I began my day walking back to Pinon at 12:30 AM after a long day of bioinformatics. 

As usual, Brett, Kano, and I walked to Foster for the morning lectures. We attended lectures from Ms. Alexa, Ms. Ceilidh, Mr. Shakil, and Mr. Joey. Today’s lectures were quite interesting from the line dancing in Ms. Alexa’s lectures to Ms. Ceilidh’s hip-hop dance tutorial. We still had to finish our posters to be submitted for printing, so I spent my lunch looking over the sequences for any potential mutations. 

After lunch, Dr. Duffy’s lecture horrified me for the hopeless future of antibiotics. The lecture made it seem we are all going to die due to the antibiotic resistant bacteria. However, our group felt especially relieved after a few all-day work sessions once the poster was sent to be printed. The rest of the day was spent relaxing and talking to other genomics participants.

Sunday

6 AM, me and Brettt woke up to my peaceful yet horrifying alarm. I wanted to go on a hike at least once during my stay at NMSU, so I was looking forward to this astounding experience. The first 3 hours were easy as the terrain was mostly smooth, but when we started to climb the mountain, that’s where things got really difficult. We were on all fours, desperately clinging to the few but stable boulders that ensured our safety on the rugged mountain side. The view once we reached the top was spectacular, validating the hard work and persistence of our climb. 

Photos were taken courtesy of Lucas Beltran.

The worst part of the hike was yet to come. While climbing down the mountain, I slid over 20 times, nearly slide tackling Emily off the side of the cliff. The limited water in my bag ran out during the first half of the hike, so the next 2 hrs were a living nightmare, with the excessive dehydration and cramps on my body. At the end of the trip, I looked down at my shoes, worn-out and torn, rethinking my choices for this hike. However, putting aside all the dreadful experiences I faced, I consider this hike to be one of the most rewarding things I’ve done, as I persisted through and accomplished a 10 mile hike without any prior experience.

Photo taken by Dr. Messner halfway up the mountain.

The post NMSU Genomics – Day 25 (last one!): Vageesh’s Blog first appeared on SSP International.

I continued my morning in the lab! Today’s procedure consisted of a transformation where we got to make more hopefully resistant Vibrio natriegens by making the bacteria take up the resistance gene. After hitting Dr. Duffy with the , I recently learned from him that throwing up the peace sign translates to the middle finger back in Scotland (oops). So to all the Scottish people I threw peace signs at in my life, I only mean love!!

After lab, I headed off back to Pinon Hall for my routine beauty nap. It was much needed rest for the unexpectedness of Miss Ceilidh’s and Miss Alexa’s TA talks.

Being born and raised in Texas, you would think I’d have the art of line dancing instilled in me since birth. Let me just say that is definitely not the case. Miss Alexa’s TA talk consisted of teaching us how to line dance where we learned line dancing to “Shivers” and “Cotton Eye Joe” With all its repetitive movements, I did eventually get the hang of it.

We were not done with dancing yet. Miss Ceilidh TA talk was learning a choreographed dance to the song “Yeah” by Usher, one of the best songs to jam out to I will say.

Our sweaty selves walked over to the lecture room for our guest speaker, Dr. Juliet Johnston where she talked about microbial wastewater treatment and queer science.

It was then dinner time. Over these five weeks, I eventually gravitated to these three foods: french fries, grilled chicken, and ice cream. A balanced meal I would say! I sat with Angelina, Eva, and Mr. Joey where we discussed fraternities and places we’ve been to.

We returned back to the lab after dinner to finish off our transformation experiment where Michael went crazy with the ethanol bottle and we drew a Rolex on Hugo’s lab coat.

Also spent time signing other people’s lab coats. A bittersweet moment indeed. Realizing that we officially only have 5 days left here, I am reminded of how much I won’t miss the dry heat or the cockroaches scattered across our dorms, but instead, the people I have gotten to know so well over these short five weeks.

The rest of the night was spent grinding out our posters and manuscripts. Every few minutes, it’s essential that I brain rot from the chaoticness of all this work and I somehow end up at the vending machine on the first floor of Foster. I have made so many mindless trips to the vending machine that I have discovered the perfect vending machine combo. Twix and cookies and cream Hershey bars. Thank you to the big backs, Kano and Arthur, for putting me on <3.

I walk back to the dorms with a sinking feeling. Not because I just consumed three Hershey bars, but because I have one day less to be with my closest friends.

The post NMSU Genomics – Day 24: Emily’s Blog first appeared on SSP International.