Fri, July 17, 2026
10:30 am - 3:35 pm
Hybrid: McPherson Lab 4054 & Zoom
Our annual SURP Symposium is coming up on Friday July 17, 10:30-15:35 in McPherson Lab, room 4054! We’ll be showcasing research presentations from this year’s SURP students and some special guests from outside the program. All are welcome to come support them!
For those wanting to join via Zoom, we will be using the Astro Coffee Zoom link.
Speaker: Summer Undergraduate Research Program Participants
Schedule/Details:
| Time | Name | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| 10:30 | Lindsay Westraadt | Welcome |
| 10:35 | Austin Fomby | Analyzing AGN Variability with NICER |
| 10:42 | Christian Geiman | Utilizing Interactive Demos to Teach Acoustics |
| 10:49 | Bailey Kearney | A Better Way to Do Periodograms |
| 10:56 | Bobby Kostko | Dark current analysis and bad pixel mapping with iLocater |
| 11:03 | Skye Rinaldi | TESS vs Kepler: Comparing Asteroseismic Data of Red Giants in Open Clusters M67 and NGC 6819 |
| 11:10 | COMFORT BREAK (10 mins) | |
| 11:20 | Samantha Schotters | DEMONEXT Robotic Telescope |
| 11:27 | Raspberry Pi Group 1 | Sam, Kevin, Allie, Tim, Austin |
| 11:34 | Raspberry Pi Group 2 | Skye, Kyle, Avi, and Vivian |
| 11:41 | Raspberry Pi Group 3 | All-Sky Camera: Bailey, Raiden, Ulric, and Dylan |
| 11:48 | Raspberry Pi Group 4 | Bobby, Christian, Eddie, Torsten |
| 11:55 | LUNCH (60 mins) | |
| 12:55 | Kevin Pierson | Reprojection and Analysis of X-ray Imaging of the Galactic Center |
| 1:02 | Eddie Barnhart | The PAH/HI Relation in M31 |
| 1:09 | Vivian Repka | Multiplet Alignment as a New Probe of the Galaxy-Halo Connection |
| 1:16 | Allie Trusko | Analytic Estimates of the Uncertainty in the Lens Mass and Distances in Microlensing Events |
| 1:23 | Dylan Kerniskey | A Little Spectra: Multi-wavelength Analysis of The Dwarf Galaxy NGC 1569 |
| 1:30 | COMFORT BREAK (10 mins) | |
| 1:40 | Tim Fry | The Effects of Baryonic Feedback in the tSZ in FLAMINGO simulations |
| 1:47 | Avi Joshi | Comparative analysis of target-centered photometry and difference imaging light curves for bulge transit candidates. |
| 1:54 | Sophie Olsen | Detecting Faint Companions to Bright Stars with SHARK-VIS |
| 2:01 | Jackson Datkuliak | iLocater Control Software and On Sky Commissioning at the LBT |
| 2:08 | 20" Telescope Team | Smith Roof Telescope Commissioning |
| 2:15 | COMFORT BREAK (10 mins) | |
| 2:25 | Laurinda Lan | AskDESI: A Local AI Expert System for DESI Operations |
| 2:32 | Adam Ballas | Building Asteroseismic Target List for Roman |
| 2:39 | Tilen Zupan | Search for Ultra High Energy Neutrinos through Multi Messenger Astronomy |
| 2:46 | Ollie Snow | Modeling Thermal Emission on the Roman Space Telescope’s Wide Field Instrument |
| 2:53 | COMFORT BREAK / Move to Planetarium (15 mins) | |
| 3:10 | Torsten Wigglesworth | Mapping large-scale structure with absolute magnitude & half-light radius |
| 3:17 | Kyle Drees | Galactic morphology visualization in Openspace |
| 3:24 | Ulric Claar | Adding Color to Openspace |
| 3:31 | Wayne/David | Closing Remarks |
| 3:35 | END | (may optionally adjourn for Astro Tea back in 4054 McPherson) |