I worked with Eric S. in the highly competitive, “High School Summer Research Experience in Astronomy” at Northwestern for 6 weeks in the summer of 2019. Eric worked with me as my Research Mentee on a project to understand spectral energy distributions (SED) of supernova explosions (SNe). To prepare for his research, he completed an in-depth literature review and prepared a presentation on that material. By performing complex calculations in radiative processes using calculus and translating his algorithms into a Python program, he was able to create an SED of different SNe. He was able to interpret the emission processes in each supernova from his work. He successfully presented his work to faculty, post-doctoral researchers, and graduate students in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Northwestern.
