2

Friday, January 15th, 2010 

Registration & Welcome Reception Crowne Plaza Hotel, Salon A (located on the 2nd Floor) 7:00pm –9:00pm

Saturday, January 16th, 2010 

Bus Pick-up Crowne Plaza Hotel Continental Breakfast & Registration Physics Research Building Atrium Welcome & Introductions Scott Labs room E0001 Featured Presentation I Gail Brown, Air Force Research Laboratory Scott Labs room E0001 Coffee Break Featured Presentation II Kirsten Tollefson, Michigan State University Scott Labs room E0001 Student Research Presentations Scott Labs room E0001 (and E0004 if needed) Lunch & Poster Set-up Physics Research Building Atrium Featured Presentation III Jennifer Ogilvie, University of Michigan Scott Labs room E0001 Featured Presentation IV Sabine Jeschonnek, Ohio State University Scott Labs room E0001 Coffee Break & Poster Session Physics Research Building Atrium

8:00am 8:30am 9:00am 9:15am 10:00am 10:15am 11:00am 12:00pm 1:00pm 1:45pm 2:30pm

3rd Annual Midwest Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics The Ohio State University January 15­17, 2010  

3

Ladies rooms are located in rooms 1102T, 2102T, 2051T Physics Research Building and E036T, E115T Scott Labs

Featured Presentation V Jessica Hanzlik, University of Oxford Scott Labs room E0001 Graduate Student Panel Scott Labs room E0001 Bus Pick-up for Hotel Banquet Dinner Crowne Plaza Hotel, Fusion Room (located on the 2nd floor) Bus Pick-up Crowne Plaza Hotel Continental Breakfast Physics Research Building Atrium Featured Presentation VI Julie McEnery, NASA Scott Labs room E0001 Student Research Presentations Scott Labs room E0001 (and E0004 if needed) Coffee Break Featured Presentation VII Nandini Trivedi, Ohio State University Scott Labs room E0001 Closing Remarks Scott Labs room E0001 Lunch Physics Research Building Atrium Bus Pick-up for Hotel

3:30pm 4:15pm 5-5:30pm 6:30pm 8:00am 8:30am 9:00am 9:45am 10:45am 11:00am 11:45am 12:00pm 1-1:30pm

Saturday, January 16th, 2010 Continued 

Sunday, January 17th, 2010  

3rd Annual Midwest Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics The Ohio State University January 15­17, 2010  

4

Gail Brown Air Force Research Laboratory Biography:

Dr. Brown is a graduate of Wright State University and the University of Dayton. She was named 2005 recipient of the WSU Outstanding Alumni Award in the College of Math and Science. She has co-authored more than 80 refereed technical journal publications, more than 70 conference proceedings papers, and two book chapters, and has more than 160 conference and workshop presentations to her credit. Dr. Brown has addressed many symposiums and other technical gatherings throughout the United States and in France, Japan, Poland and Portugal, chaired 17 national and international conferences, and given more than 70 technical management briefings on behalf of the Air Force. She has been an advisor to the National Research Council and an adjunct professor at Northwestern University. She is a member of the Materials Research Society, Scientific Research Society (Sigma Xi), Physics Honor Society (Sigma Pi Sigma), and the Association of Women in Science, as well as the International Society for Optical Engineering and APS. Dr. Brown has received numerous prestigious awards for her contributions to science and the United States Air Force, including the highly coveted Air Force Basic Research Award (2002) for cutting edge research on superlattice materials for next generation infrared sensing. She earned the Meritorious Civilian Service Medal in 2007 for outstanding leadership in this field. Dr. Brown is a recipient of the Charles J. Cleary Scientific Achievement Award; the highest award presented by the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate for scientific achievement. The research team she leads earned STAR Team honors from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in 2002 for basic research supporting the Air Force. As the recipient of the 2008 Women's History Month Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Role Model Award, Dr. Brown was recognized for demonstrating "exceptional commitment, expertise, and leadership in the critical area of materials research for the next generation of space sensing technologies supporting both missile defense and reconnaissance and surveillance applications." She has successfully led an in-house research team comprised of 28 scientists; one of only a few women at AFRL in that role. She has also been an active member of the National Science Foundation Advisory Committee on Historically Black Colleges & Universities-Research Infrastructure for Science & Engineering (HBCU-RISE) for the Development of Sensors and Sensor Materials, and a guest speaker at HBCU events.

5

Jessica Hanzlik

Oxford University Title of Presentation: “Feminist Physics”

Biography: Jessica Hanzlik is a 2008 Rhodes Scholar currently completing her second year of studies at the University of Oxford in England. She earned her undergraduate degree from the Ohio State University where she studied physics and French. During her time at OSU, she thoroughly enjoyed gaining experience in research, both in an experimental high-energy physics lab and in writing a thesis in French. Her physics research involved looking for the elusive Higgs boson, the particle that could explain the origins of mass in the universe. Her French research consisted of comparing the educational and cultural backgrounds of American and French female scientists in an attempt to pinpoint particular differences which might explain the observed effect whereby more French than American women become scientists. At the University of Oxford, Jessica spent her first year earning a masters degree in particle physics during which she joined R&D efforts for the Super Large Hadron Collider (SLHC). For this work, she tested the stability under variable temperatures and radiation doses of the optical fibers which will be used in the read-out systems of the inner detectors at the LHC. Currently, Jessica is pursuing a masters in comparative social policy, focusing on comparative education policy. She hopes to use her training and research experiences to improve the quality of science education in the United States, as she believes that without a diverse and well-educated population of scientists, innovation, entrepreneurship, and progress are hindered.

6

Sabine Jeschonnek

The Ohio State University Title of Presentation: "Exploring Light Nuclei with Electronic Scattering"

Abstract: An interesting question in nuclear physics is why the description of a nucleus in terms of nucleons works so well, and where the quark-gluon substructure of nucleons will become apparent. With electron scattering, one can investigate the short-range structure of nuclei. In order to correctly interpret the data, a good theoretical understanding of the reaction mechanism is necessary. I will discuss some of the broader issues, the experimental program at Jefferson Lab, and my own research in nuclear theory. Biography: Sabine Jeschonnek studied physics at Bonn University in Germany from 1987 - 1993. She did her Diplomarbeit at Forschungszentrum Juelich, a german national lab, in nuclear physics. During the next three years, she continued her research work in Juelich, at the Institute for Nuclear Physics, and received her Ph.D. in 1996. In 1997, she went to MIT as a Feodor-Lynen fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and spent two years there. Then, she was a post-doc at Jefferson Lab in Newport News, VA, for three years. In September 2001, she joined Ohio State as an assistant professor on the Lima campus. She was tenured and promoted in 2006. Her research interest is nuclear theory, in particular electron scattering from light nuclei. She is also engaged in various outreach activities on the Lima campus. One of her recent major accomplishments was organizing the Photonuclear Reactions Gordon Research Conferences in 2006 as Vice Chair and in 2008 as Chair.

7

Julie McEnery NASA Title of Presentation:

“A New View of the High Energy Gamma-Ray Sky with the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope” Biography: Julie McEnery is the Fermi Project Scientist and an astrophysicist in the Astroparticle Physics Laboratory, Astrophysics Science Division of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Since 2009, she is also an Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland’s College Park campus. An Irish citizen, Julie received her BSc in Physics with Astrophysics from the University of Manchester in June 1993. In August 1997 she received her Ph.D. in Physics from University College, Dublin.  As Fermi Project Scientist in 2009, a role she took on in 2009, Julie provides scientific guidance and information to mission staff, working with all elements of the mission -- from instrument teams to mission operations. These efforts will maximize scientific return from the observatory. Active galaxies and GRBs remain her main science interests, but she also explores interesting topics in other areas. She is also involved with team science activities such as low-level simulations, analysis development ,and publication planning. Julie has previously worked with ground-based gamma-ray telescopes, which detect Cherenkov radiation produced when gamma rays from deep space strike Earth's atmosphere. As a graduate student she used the Whipple Observatory to make very-high-energy observations of the active galaxy Markarian 421. She later worked with the Milagro collaboration primarily on gamma-ray burst (GRB) observations.

8

Jennifer Ogilvie

University of Michigan Title of Presentation: "Ultrafast Snapshots of Biological Function"

Biography: Bsc. degree in Applied Physics, University of Waterloo, Canada MSc. in Physics, Simon Fraser University, Canada PhD. in Physics, University of Toronto, Canada Postdoctoral fellow, Ecole Polytechnique, France Assistant Professor of Physics and Biophysics, University of Michigan, 2005 - present Selected awards and honors: Alfred P. Sloan Fellow 2005-2007 Recipient of the NSF CAREER award 2007

9

Kirsten Tollefson

Michigan State University Title of Presentation: "Exploring the Universe using Particle Accelerators"

Biography: Dr. Kirsten Tollefson is an associate professor of physics at Michigan State University. She received her B.A. from Gustavus Adolphus College and Ph.D. from University of Rochester. She started out as a mechanical engineering major but after spending a summer in a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program building a proto-type detector for the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) she fell in love with high-energy physics. Just as she started her graduate work the SSC was canceled but the Tevatron accelerator at Fermilab was going strong and she was part of the team on the CDF experiment that discovered the top quark. She has spent her career studying the mysteries of the top quark, first at the CDF experiment and now on the ATLAS experiment which has just started taking data at CERN using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). She also has had a life long interest in astrophysics and recently joined a high-energy cosmic rays experiment, the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) experiment, that brings particle physics and astrophysics together to answer questions concerning what is our universe made up of.

10

Nandini Trivedi

The Ohio State University Title of Presentation: "Balancing a Career in Physics and Family"

Abstract: I will talk about my specific research in theoretical condensed matter physics, the challenges I faced, what were the strategies I used, and what it took to make it as a professor of physics. The journey is worth it, extremely rewarding and I would not trade it for anything else!

Biography:

o Education − 1981 BS and MS, Physics, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi − 1987 Ph.D. Physics, Cornell University

o Employment

− 2004 ‐ Professor, Department of Physics, The Ohio State University − 2002‐2003 Visiting Professor, Physics and MRL, University of Illinois

at Urbana − 1995‐2004 Reader, Associate Professor, & Professor, Tata Institute of

Fundamental Research, India − 1991‐1995 Assistant Scientist and Scientist, Materials Science Division, − Argonne National Laboratory − 1989‐1991 Postdoctoral Research Associate, Physics, SUNY at Stony

Brook − 1987‐1989 Post‐Doctoral Research Associate, Univ. of Illinois at Urbana

o Current Research Interests:

− Computational Condensed Matter Theory − Quantum Monte Carlo Simulations for Fermions and Bosons − Strongly Correlated Systems; Transition Metal Oxides − Disorder and Interaction Driven Quantum Phase Transitions

11

Student Presentations

Katayun Kamdin University of Chicago

Electron Temperature Measurements with Soft X-Ray Spectrometry on the Compact Toroidal Hybrid

E0001 Scott Labs 11:00-11:15am, Saturday

I will present on the materials, methods, and results of my summer research project -- setting up and taking initial electron temperature measurements on the Compact Toroidal Hybrid (CTH) stellarator. The free electrons in a hot plasma emit bremsstrahlung radiation in the soft x-ray region. By collecting the emission spectrum with a spectrometer over a plasma discharge ("shot"), the average electron temperature can be determined. To track the time evolution of the electron temperature, the emission spectrum must be collected several times in a shot; a fast-digitizer is employed in conjunction with the spectrometer to this end. The spectrum is found to typically show two characteristic temperatures, indicating that the electron distribution in the plasma is not thermal, i.e., it has a high temperature tail. In both schemes, low count rates limit the information available in the high temperature range of the spectrum. I will discuss these results, their implications, and possible improvements to the electron temperature measurement scheme.

Lindsay Owens Wright State University

Non Destructive Evaluation using Terahertz Time Domain Spectroscopy and Imaging E0001 Scott Labs 11:15-11:30am, Saturday

Samples with surface defects such as burns or corrosion were resolved through layers of paint using various time domain terahertz (THz) imaging techniques. Each imaging technique optimizes the detection of a specific defect, while simultaneously being unable to distinguish others. It has been concluded that to have a full examination for a given composite sample, multiple imaging techniques must be used and compared. While these techniques have been done using X-rays, THz methods are preferred due to their non destructive interactions with the sample.

Lisa Genovese Grand Valley State University

What Meteor Showers are Out There and Where Do They Come From? E0001 Scott Labs 11:30-11:45am, Saturday

Last summer I took part in an REU at the SETI Institute. I had never done research outside of a structured classroom. This program opened my eyes to the research world while I studied meteor showers and their parent bodies. I have never done astronomy research before so I also learned a great deal about meteor showers in the process. This REU helped me grow as a person and a scientist.

12

Student Presentations

Cont.

Jessica Muir

Michigan State University E0001 Scott Labs, 11:45-12:00pm, Saturday

For the past year and a half I have been working on experimental high energy physics research with the ATLAS group at MSU. In my group we've been focusing on the effects of using different jet reconstruction algorithms for analysis, and are preparing to run a full analysis on a W+Jets data set from Monte Carlo simulations. In my presentation, I will discuss the ATLAS experiment, jet reconstruction algorithms, and their importance in the context of our analysis.

M. Kaylee Underwood West Virginia University

E0001 Scott Labs 9:45-9:57am, Sunday

Due to the rising cost of oil and concerns for environmental health and safety, there is increased need for cheaper, more environmentally friendly plastics such as poly-L-lactide which is biodegradable and made from L-lactide (derived from corn). Most known catalysts for ring-opening polymerization of L-lactide involve heavy metals which are effective, but create plastics that can be toxic because of residual metal. This research aims to determine if benzamidine is an organocatalyst for this reaction, how effective it is compared to other known organocatalysts, and if it can be improved by the addition of substituents. Using density functional theory (B3LYP), we determined the reaction pathways of benzamidine and its substituted counterparts as well as the basicity and hydrogen-bonding ability of these catalysts. Benzamidine demonstrated a higher reaction barrier than triazabicyclodecene (TBD), the best known organocatalyst for this reaction, which we attribute to the lower basicity of benzamidine. The hydrogen-bonding ability appeared to play a lesser role in catalytic effectiveness. Electron withdrawing substituents 3,5-CF3 and 4-NO2 decreased basicity and were less effective while the electron donating substituent 4-N(CH3)2 proved more effective in increasing basicity. Substituting nitrogen for carbon in the 2 and 6 positions promoted planarity and lowered basicity while maintaining a similar reaction barrier to unsubstituted benzamidine verifying the importance of conjugation to catalytic strength. Benzamidine has been shown to be a weaker catalyst than TBD, but adding electron donating substituents and modifications which contribute to conjugation provides room for improvements. Computational results have shown to be effective in predicting trends among these catalysts and assisting chemists in their understanding of the competing mechanisms.

Dina Drozdov The Ohio State University

E0001 Scott Labs 9:57-10:09am, Sunday

My research topic is spin statistics of spiral galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. My research is in Astrophysics. We were looking at spiral galaxy pairs and seeing their affect on one another. We were trying to find a correlation between galaxy spin orientation and distance between spiral galaxies. We used the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to locate our spiral galaxy pairs. This is the first study to combine information on galaxy orientation and galaxy geometry to find a relationship between the angular momentums of spiral galaxies.

13

Student Presentations

Cont.

Chen Gong Ohio Wesleyan University

A photometric study of Algol type eclipsing binary LV Her E0001 Scott Labs 10:09-10:21am, Sunday

Analyzing eclipsing binary stars’ photometric data is the only way that enables astronomers to accurately calculate fundamental properties of stars such as mass and size. In this project, we use photometric light curve to determine the absolute dimensions (mass, radius, absolute magnitude, luminosity and surface gravity) of Algol-type eclipsing binary star LV Her. We test our results against the stellar evolutionary model Y2 Isocrhones and find no difference within the observational uncertainties. Photometric observations were made in V filter with a CCD sensor from 2001 to 2009 at the University of Arkansas. The light curve is solved using EBOP program (NDE model). The results demonstrate that LV Her is a detached system (Algol-type), with high orbit eccentricity (0.6142±0.0001) and relatively long orbital period (18.43595 days). Two components are similar in mass and size and also to those of the Sun. To calculate the temperatures of the two stars, instead of using spectral class determined by Popper, we calculate directly from color indices obtained from three surveys: TASS, 2MASS, TYCHO, and the observation made by Hilditch and Hill. The effect due to interstellar reddening is determined using the comparison between the color indices of the theoretical model and the observed values from the surveys. This consideration increases the intrinsic temperatures by about 200K. The temperature for the primary star is 6215K±25 and for the secondary 6195K±25. To test the Y2 Isochrones theory, we plot LV Her’s positions on H-R diagram along with the isochrones tracks. Within the uncertainties of both luminosity and temperature, two stars of LV Her overlay a same range of isochrones, proving that the theory successfully predict the same age for both stars. Therefore we cannot reject this theory. The average age for the primary is 2.67 billion years and for the secondary 2.42 billion years.

Jennifer Bean Missouri State University

E0001 Scott Labs 10:21-10:33am, Sunday I was a Euroscholars at Leiden University, the Netherlands. While a Euroscholars I conducted research for/with Simon Portegies-Zwart and Anthony Brown. My research was a continuation of Simon's paper “The Lost Siblings of the Sun." The Sun was created in an embedded cluster with a number of other stars. I used simulations to try and find possible candidates of these other stars in the Hipparcos catalogue. I did this by running simulations created by Dr. Anthony Brown and using the simulated data as selection criteria for the stars in Hipparcos catalog.

14

Student Presentations

Cont.

Jessica Orwig The Ohio State University

Supernova 2003gs spectral fitting E0001 Scott Labs 10:33-10:45am, Sunday

Utilizing the computer program SYNOW, written by Dr. David Branch at Oklahoma University, it is possible to produce a fit for visible spectra of Type Ia Supernovae. Visible spectra for Type Ia Supernova 2003gs (SN2003gs) have been fit using SYNOW. These fits illuminate the evolution of chemical composition within the supernova from two weeks to five weeks post explosion. The strong iron presence within the spectra is an expected result, which advocates models of chemical structure within a Type Ia Supernova. According to Dr. Branch’s series of papers involving Type Ia categorization from calculation of silicon II equivalent width calculations, SN2003gs can be identified as a cool Type Ia Supernova.

Graduate Student Panel

Panelists Jessica Hanzlik – Graduate Student, Oxford University. Areas of Study: Particle Physics and Comparative Social Policy Caitlin Malone – Graduate Student, Stanford University. Area of Study: Particle Physics Kate Grier – Graduate Student, The Ohio State University. Area of Study: Astronomy Jennifer Siegal-Gaskins – Post Doctoral Researcher, The Ohio State University. Area of Study: Astrophysics Marci Howdyshell – Graduate Student, The Ohio State University. Area of Study, Physics Panelist Leader Jennifer Thompson – Graduate Student, The Ohio State University. Area of Study: Physics

15

16

 

3rd Annual Midwest Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics January 15‐17, 2010 

Financial support from the following organizations is gratefully acknowledged:

  Department of Physics   The Ohio State University 

   

          Center for Cosmology            and AstroParticle Physics           The Ohio State University 

                                     National Science Foundation                 U.S. Department of Energy  This Conference is being held in conjunction with Yale University, University of California Santa Cruz, and Duke University