Wright Lab hosts summer research students in fundamental physics, astronomy, and quantum science

group of people standing in front of a large, circular sculpture

September 15, 2023

From June 5 to August 4, 2023, Wright Lab hosted a 9-week summer research program for undergraduates, postgraduates, and high school students, in partnership with the Yale Physics Department, the Yale Astronomy Department, and the Yale Quantum Institute (YQI ) .

All student researchers working at Wright Lab (WL), the Yale Physics Department, the Yale Astronomy Department, and YQI were invited to join the program. In addition, Wright Lab partnered with the Hopkins Authentic Research Program in Science (HARPS) to place three local high school students into successful summer internships at Wright Lab in 2023. Collectively, the 2023 Wright Lab summer program supported the mentorship and enrichment of 40 undergraduate and 4 high school student researchers, working across the variety of scientific fields represented by the program’s partner institutions and departments.

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The 2023 programming included 8 training workshops and 11 enrichment activities that were coordinated by Victoria Misenti, Wright Lab program manager; Florian Carle, YQI program manager, and Bob Zinn, professor of astronomy and Director of Summer Sciences at Yale Summer Session. The program concluded with three days of research presentations (July 25 and 26 in the Astronomy Department and August 4 at Wright Lab), where the students each presented the work they had done over the summer in a 10-minute scientific talk to their peers, mentors, and the communities of Wright Lab, Yale Astronomy, Yale Physics and YQI.

person teaching a class with slides in the background. a small group of people gathered at a table with laptops in front of them talking.

Training workshops

Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) Orientation for Wright Lab Shops (Charles Watts, EHS)
Hands-on computing workshop (Vincent Balbarin, YCRC)
Introduction to the Advanced Prototyping Center (James Nikkel, Wright Lab APC)
Introduction to Quantum Computing (Yonghsan Ding, YQI)
Applying to Graduate Schools Panel (H. Arce, W. Cerny, D. Nagai, E. Pottebaum, R. Ramos)
Resumes and Websites workshop (Kayleigh Bohémier, Marx library)
Science Communication: (David Moore, Samantha Pagan, Jorge Torres)
Designing Slides to Present Scientific Results (Samantha Pagan, Iris Ponce, Mike Jewell)