Students honored at undergraduate physics symposium

From states of decay to pathogen detection in blood, Arizona State University students presented on various physics topics to help further scientific research at the 18th annual Undergraduate Physics Symposium.

A total of 16 students presented at the symposium on April 9. Out of the presenters, four awards were given out to the best presentations that showed excellence within the department.

Two Department of Physics Awards were given. The first was to Chase Hanson for his presentation titled “Electronic structure of higher-order Ruddlesden Popper nickelates.” The second award was given to Patrick Walker for his presentation “Search for new states that decay K*K.”

Hanson feels excited about being recognized by the faculty and alumni judging the presentation.

“I got a lot of questions from faculty, and they asked very good questions," Hanson said. "It was really fun to talk to them ... honestly I'm honored.”

Walker feels like earning the award was the "icing on the cake" after all the work he put in.

“The data analysis is one thing, but the other half of it is learning the systems and all that stuff that we use to analyze these data sets," Walker said. "So that was a huge learning curve. I actually spent most of the fall semester learning the software and how to get used to it and all that stuff before I was actually digging through any tangible data.”

The Women in Physics Award for Undergraduate Research was presented to Anna Costelle for her presentation titled “Construction of Event Generators for Strangeness-Containing Final States.” Costelle feels the award is important to her due to the previous lack of inclusion for women in the STEM field. 

“I remember in one of my AP physics classes I was literally the only girl in that class,” Costelle said. “And so, to be recognized as a woman in physics and to have these kind of opportunities available to me — that meant a lot, just because I know that there are a lot of women in the past who would have loved to have this opportunity and they couldn't.”

The John and Richard Jacob Award for Undergraduate Research was presented to Edis Jakupovic for his presentation titled “MPI-parallel Molecular Dynamics Trajectory Analysis with the H5MD Format in the MDAnalysis Python Package."

Finally, the Physics Community Choice Award was given to Riley Rane, Tanvi Sathish and Karishma Sivakumar for their project "InnovaBug," a small, low-cost, fast medical diagnostic device used to detect pathogens in small volumes of fluid.