James Pierce
The geological core of North America, known as Laurentia, is a product of a collision that occurred some 1.85 billion years ago. The Superior Craton of eastern Canada collided with the Hearne and Wyoming Cratons to the west, creating the Trans-Hudson Orogenic Belt and the foundation for Earths putative first supercontinent, Nuna. As igneous rocks form, they record the direction and magnitude of Earths magnetic field as remanent magnetism. Ferromagnetic minerals, such as magnetite, align their magnetization in the direction of the prevailing magnetic field. After collecting samples that date […]
Vivian Li
The firing properties of a neuron are not only influenced by the electrical and chemical signals it receives, but also by the physical properties of its environment. Their ability to detect stimuli such as pH, temperature, and mechanical pressure allows a neuron to change its excitability in response. Two-pore domain potassium (K2P) ion channels are of particular importance because they are crucial in hyperpolarizing and modulating the resting membrane potential. Deviations from normal resting membrane potentials lead to unexpected consequences, including mental illness.The purpose of this research project is to […]
Mason Haberle
Numerical linear algebra underlies much of the modern world. It is essential to a wide variety of situations, and, as such, it is of great interest to analyze and optimize the underlying algorithms. In recent years, there has been an increased interest in optimizing algorithms to reduce communication, which is frequently many orders of magnitude slower than performing calculations. The Hlder-Brascamp-Lieb inequality and the Red-Blue Pebbling Game are two powerful approaches to theoretical analysis of communication, and both are used to derive communication optimal lower bounds. Once these bounds have […]
Jasper Murphy
Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) is a retrovirus that is present in 84% of dairy and 38% of beef cattle in the USA [Buehring]. Even more threatening is the discovery that humans are also infected with BLV and the frequency of BLV DNA in mammary epithelium from women with breast cancer (59%) was significantly higher than in normal controls (29%) [Buehring]. This association of BLV with breast cancer motivates research toward generating a treatment. In my research project, I will attempt to knock out the essential tax region of the BLV […]
Yonna Kim
Solid-state defect centers such as the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center in diamond are promising nanoscale quantum sensors capable of operating at extreme pressures and temperatures. Their sensitivity to magnetic field noise allows for the characterization of a wide range of dynamical phenomena arising from charge, spin, and phonon fluctuations in correlated matter. The frequency dependence of these fluctuations encodes unique information about the underlying physics processes that cannot be gleaned from the static signatures that are typically used in standard magnetometry. With NV centers, one could measure the magnetic response of […]
Anthony Chen
Numerical linear algebra underlies much of the modern world. It is essential to a wide variety situations, and as such, it is of great interest to analyze and optimize the underlying algorithms. In recent years, there has been an increased interest in optimizing algorithms to reduce communication, which is frequently many orders of magnitude slower than performing calculations. The Hlder-Brascamp-Lieb inequality and the Red-Blue Pebbling Game are two powerful approaches to theoretical analysis of communication, and both are used to derive communication optimal lower bounds. Once these bounds have been […]
Joshua Lin
Over the summer, we propose to investigate the root multiplicities of (generalized) Kac-Moody Algebras. Our plan is to create an open-source computer package that allows for the computation of root multiplicities of Kac-Moody algebras, building upon the existing tools available to computational mathematicians, for instance, the popular library sage-math. Once we have developed and verified this package against known tables of root multiplicities, we aim to start investigating the root multiplicities of simple graphs, and attempt to address some outstanding conjectures on the distributions of root multiplicities. A greater understanding […]
Dalila Robledo
The experiment that I will be working on this summer is currently being set up to prepare lithium-rubidium ultracold molecules. Ultracold molecules are those whose kinetic temperature as a measure of their velocity distribution is close to zero Kelvin, the regime where quantum effects of matter dominate. An interesting property of this particular molecule is its intrinsically large permanent dipole moment, which allows it to strongly interact with neighboring molecules. Strong tunable interactions allow for the realization of quantum entangling operations, so understanding and controlling molecular systems contributes to both […]
Hunter Martin
One of the principal probes of cosmology is weak gravitational lensing whereby gravitational effects of mass bend the path of light. This causes small but correlated distortions in the images of distant galaxies which we can measure and then use to study the distribution of matter over cosmological distances and time scales. However, one of the fundamental assumptions of this method is that galaxy shapes (which we can model as ellipses) are randomly oriented in the universe, and that these distortions serve to align them. But what happens when the […]
Katherine Roger
My research aims to understand the impact of invasive plant species on multi-level ecological relationships i.e. how do (or dont) invasive plants change the relational landscape of a region? To address this question, Ill be looking at the tripartite relationships between 1) native and non-native plant species, 2) butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera), and 3) the microbiota that live within butterfly and moth guts. Each of these relationships has coevolved through time, and I am curious to see how changing species assemblages impact not just individuals, but the tightly woven networks […]