Wright Lab undergraduate Barkotel Zemenu, ’24 won a top presenter award for presenting his research at the American Physical Society (APS) April Meeting, which was held in Minneapolis from April 15-18, 2023.
Zemenu said, “My talk, which focused on my ongoing research at Wright Lab with Prof. David C. Moore, was titled “Characterizing the Outgassing of Electronegative Impurities in nEXO”. I attended the APS April meeting with the Future of Physics Days (FPD) grant which ‘helps undergraduate students get the most out of APS March and April meetings through interactive workshops, professional development activities, career discovery … and potentially winning a prize as a top presenter.’ The Yale College Dean’s Office Rosenfeld Travel Award funded my conference experience.”
As part of the FPD program, physicists and career mentors judge for “top presenters excelling in presentation delivery (preparedness, visual layout), knowledge (understanding of concepts, answering questions), and content (presentation organization, logic/flow).”
The APS hosts its annual April Meeting “Quarks to Cosmos” as an opportunity for APS members, physicists, and other scientists to come together to discuss their research and current events relevant to the scientific community. The meeting encompasses a broad range of physics spanning astrophysics, particle physics, nuclear physics, and gravitation. It brings together researchers from around the world representing more than twenty APS Units and committees.