Congratulations to Wright Lab undergraduate student Rose Powers; who was awarded a 2024 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP), along with Yale Physics graduate students Aaron Greenberg, Andrew Neely, and Carlton Smith.
In addition, we congratulate Wright Lab graduate student Emily Pottebaum for being awarded an honorable mention, along with Yale Physics undergraduate Catherine Zhang and undergraduate alum Tristan Weaver, ‘23.
The NSF GRFP recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited US institutions. The five-year fellowship includes three years of financial support including an annual stipend and a cost of education allowance to the institution. Click here for a list of awardees.
Biographies
Rose Powers is a physics (Intensive) major working with Sarah Demers, professor of physics and a member of Yale’s Wright Lab. Rose’s research in the area of high-energy particle experiment focuses mainly on software development for event reconstruction and trigger systems. She spent two summers at Fermilab with the Mu2e experiment and is currently collaborating on software R&D for the future Muon Collider effort. Rose is involved with the physics community on campus as a part of Yale’s Society of Physics Students (SPS) branch, where she served as outreach co-chair during the 2022-23 academic year. She is passionate about physics education; and serving as a peer tutor for the PHYS200/201 course sequence has been a highlight of her college years. Rose is deeply honored to be offered the NSF GRFP and is excited to continue contributing to muon collider research and development (R&D) in the coming years.
Demers said, “I’ve had the privilege of working with Rose for several years. She began her work in my group on Mu2e, an experiment at Fermilab that will hunt for charged lepton flavor violation, with contributions to the trigger for the experiment. More recently she has been carrying out studies investigating the feasibility of a detector at a potential future muon collider. She did remarkable work in both contexts, building up a fan club among my colleagues, who expressed shock regularly that she wasn’t already a graduate student. She is not only a phenomenal and independent researcher, but she also contributes to our department as a peer tutor and mentor. The NSF chose very well!”
Emily Pottebaum is a second year graduate student and a member of Yale’s Wright Lab working with professors Karsten Heeger (advisor) and Reina Maruyama on the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) and the CUORE Upgrade with Particle Identification (CUPID) experiments, which are searching for neutrinoless double beta decay. Outside of research, Emily serves on the Gender Representation in Physics (GRiP) Executive Board and is active in both the Yale Pathways to Science and Yale Physics Department’s outreach programs.