Who are we?

Program Director: Dr. Patrick Sheehan is an NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow, and has over nine summers of experience in leading Astronomy focused high school summer programs. 

The 2021 research mentors and instructors are listed below:

Mentors: Howard Chen, Erin Cox, Giacomo Fragione,  Monica Gallegos-Garcia, Alexa Gordon, Miguel Martinez, Jillian Rastinejad, Michael Stroh

Instructors: Deanne Coppejans, Lindsay DeMarchi,  Wynn Jacobson-Galan, Emma Kaufman, Camille Liotine,  Diego Munoz, Stacy Montgomery, Kerry Paterson,  Sukrit Ranjan, Monica Rizzo, Kyle Rocha, Genevieve Schroeder, and Tjitske Starkenburg

Extended Research Projects

The 2021 cohort of High School students worked on the following research projects, created by the CIERA scientists below:

Exploring Fast Radio Burst Host Galaxy Properties

Project Design: Alexa Gordon

Student: Mira Littman

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are new, mysterious events that have only been detected with radio waves so far. In order to learn more about these events, we can study the galaxies in which they form (called host galaxies) to determine what could lead to FRBs. In this project, you will explore the brightness and colors of these host galaxies and use Python plotting tools to compare the properties of FRB host galaxies (such as mass, age, composition, and many others) to see if there are similarities or differences among the known sample of FRB host galaxies. 

Polarization in Baby Stars

Project Design: Erin Cox

Student Angela Guo

Magnetic fields are everywhere in space, and we want to know how they control young stars that are only just forming. We will use data from the ALMA telescope in Chile to look at the polarization signature from young stars to figure this out. We’ll also use this data to find out basic information about these stars, such as how big they are. 

Simulations and Evolution of Binary Black Holes  

Project Design: Monica Gallegos-Garcia

Student: Rafael Crespo

Massive stars (>8 the mass of the sun) can become black holes. When you have two massive stars together in a binary system you can have many different and exciting outcomes. In this project you will use data from simulations of binary stellar evolution to study the formation of binary black hole mergers to understand how common different outcomes might be. 

Exoplanet Biosignatures driven by Stellar Activity

Project Design: Howard Chen

Student: Alexandra Yao

Stellar activity is thought to be able to impact a planet’s atmospheric evolution, but the extent that these effects can influence the abundance of biologically produced gases is unknown. We’ll be using data and modeling tools to understand how much biosignatures can be produced and whether we can observe them with future telescopes. 

Gravitational Waves from Mergers of Binary Black Holes 

Project Design: Giacomo Fragione

Student: Charles Petajan

The recent discovery of gravitational waves has opened new horizons and promise to shed light on the origin of black holes. The astrophysical origin of mergers of black holes is among the most puzzling open questions of our time. We will use numerical simulations of close encounters of black hole pairs to understand under which conditions they will merge. The characteristics of the black holes that merge will be compared to the catalogs from the LIGO/Virgo collaboration. 

How Much r-Process Material do Neutron Star Mergers Create?

Project Design: Jillian Rastinejad

Student: Sophie Lammers

Most of the heavy, rare elements on Earth (including gold and platinum) were formed by the r-process in astrophysical explosions. The explosions of merging neutron stars, “kilonovae”, have been observed to form r-process elements. We will use a small sample of observed kilonovae and models to determine how much r-process material was created by these mergers.

Exploring Variable Stars and the Milky Way 

Project Design: Michael Stroh

Student: Mason Hergert

Stars are useful probes of the dynamics of the Milky Way. In this project, we will use new data from the Very Large Array to map the velocities of stars in the Milky Way and also look for correlations between the strength of the radio and optical emission. 

Moonmoons

Project Design: Miguel Martinez

Student: Sam Sweet

An interesting question came up a few years ago: is it possible for moons to have sub-moons? Putting aside questions of formation, the student will run some simulations of orbits around moons analogous to the moons found in the solar system and diagnose their long term stability.