Why I Want To Pursue The SPS Summer Internship Program

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Throughout my three years as a physics undergraduate I have acquired knowledge about physics and physics-related topics, which qualify me to participate as a member of the SPS Summer internship program.
Cal Poly's "Learn By Doing" philosophy has allowed me to pursue my passions in physics by giving me opportunities to conduct hands on research. As a freshman, I became a student assistant for the Research and Education Collaborative Occultation Network (RECON). Our project, guided by Dr. John Keller, studies trans-neptunian objects in the Kuiper Belt to discover information about the early solar system. Here, I've learned how to conduct database analysis and how to analyze star fields. Additionally, as a student assistant I mentored peers in telescope assembly, and educated high school teachers in our network about astronomy. The skills of networking and data-analytics I have acquired as a student assistant for RECON will help me conquer challenges I may face in the SPS Internship Program. Communicating with others is a valuable attribute to have in any internship experience and I have learned this through teaching others about telescopes and astronomy. …show more content…

During the summer of my freshman year, I studied binary star systems and published two papers in the Journal of Double Star Observations. I worked with a team of four other students to accomplish this task. The teamwork and technical writing skills I acquired in the ten week program will allow me to conduct efficient team-based research as a member of the SPS Internship Program. The next year as a Frost Scholar , I worked on porting IDL-based code into python 3.0. Computer coding skills are essential for most physics research, and are a valuable skillset to have for the SPS Internship

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