I have been involved in various forms of outreach since I was a high school student, where I volunteered at the Da Vinci Science Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania. I also partook in the Bay Area Scientists In Schools program and traveled to schools in the bay area to educate K-12 students about science. In the beginning of 2020 I worked with Alexis Soboleski at Emmaus high school on a project designed to recreate the process of tidal disruption in the art classroom.
Science and Art
Most recently, I’ve been working with Katie Gabriel, the chair of the art department and an art teacher at Fayetteville-Manlius high school, to combine the scientific discipline with artistic expression; among Katie’s most famous creations is the following (dubbed “The Pensive Astronomer” and considered the Mona Lisa of its time):
We recently completed a project centered around visualizing and experiencing extreme stars and astrophysical environments, with the students describing their creative processes and motivation for selecting their media. Below are some of the pieces that the students created:
Syracuse University Research in Physics (SURPh) 2022
In the Summer of 2022, I worked with Professors Jenny Ross, Ali Patteson, and Denver Whittington to initiate the inaugural year of the Syracuse University Research in Physics, or SURPh, program. For SURPh we brought Syracuse City School District high school students into the physics department to partake in research, for six weeks during the Summer of 2022.
I worked with high school juniors Sarah Kapalanga and Angela Kumah on research related to stellar evolution and tidal disruption events. At the end of the program, the students made posters and presented their research to the faculty, upper administration at SU, and friends and family. Here is an image of Angela and Sarah next to their science poster:
Funding for the SURPh program was provided in part by an MPS-High supplemental award to National Science Foundation grant AST-2006684. Here is a link to a news article describing the SURPh program: