Science & Outdoors
Michelle Stevens will participate in the National Science Foundation’s internship program for the second time this summer.
Student to participate in NSF research program
The Pointer
nmeye177@uwsp.edu
Michelle Stevens, a University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point physics major, has been selected for the second time into the National Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates internship program. She will conduct research at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.
Last year eight students from UW-SP, including Stevens, were selected to be involved with the prestigious student research program over the summer. Students who completed their internships last summer said the opportunity and experience has greatly changed their lives.
“The REU greatly aided the decisions governing my future,” said Karl Larsen who conducted his internship at Montana State University last summer. “It solidified my thought regarding graduate school engineering and whether or not to attend.”
Stevens, who completed her REU last summer at Notre Dame, will get another chance to develop her skills at Caltech at one of the top schools in the country in the field of physics. Stevens said she is looking forward to the opportunity to work at the institute.
“I applied to six different programs, but Caltech was my top choice, and I wasn’t very optimistic about being accepted, since they’re a really good school for physics,” said Stevens. “I did a happy dance when I got in.”
Placement into the REU program is extremely competitive. The NSF funds these research programs at schools across the U.S. Students then compete against hundreds of applicants for a few spots at each university involved. Caltech received hundreds of applicants and Stevens was selected for one of their 20 spots.
“Generally, any physics major is eligible, provided they’re not graduating, but realistically you need to have some prior research experience, decent grades and stellar letters of recommendation to get in,” said Stevens.
Stevens will be working on the Caltech campus with two research professors and possibly a few graduate students. She’ll be working on the Laser Interferometry Gravitational Wave Observation project, which is jointly run by Caltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Just like sound waves or water waves, the movement of massive astronomical objects creates waves in the fabric of space-time,” said Stevens, explaining exactly what she’ll be working on. “If we can detect these waves, we can learn a lot about the bodies that created them and the physics that’s going on there.”
Stevens will be working on designing something called an “Optical Gyroscope.” The “Optical Gyroscope” will be used at each of the LIGO detectors so researchers can get a better look at these gravitational waves.
The REU will significantly aid Stevens in pursuing her goal of being able to teach and research physics for the rest of her life as a professor at a university.
“Caltech has housed some of modern science’s great physicists, like Richard Feynman, Kip Thorne and a host of others,” said Stevens. “They’re a top-notch research institution, definitely among the best in physics, so having that on my resume before grad school will be really good.”
Stevens will start the program on June 16 and conduct research for ten weeks before returning on August 21 and Stevens said she wouldn’t spend her summer any other way.
“I get to be a part of this big project that is attempting to understand more about the universe that we live in,;that’s cool,” she said. “I love physics, so the opportunity to get paid to do what I love to do over the summer is awesome.”
