First Published Paper

I’m incredibly excited to announce that there is a paper published in the Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy, on which I am a coauthor on account of the work I have done in the last two summers with regards to the Ammonia molecule.

Extended Measurements and an Experimental Accuracy Effective Hamiltonian Model for the 3\nu_2 and \nu_4+\nu_2 States of Ammonia” appears in the 353 volume of the Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy.

JPL Research 2017

This summer I once again worked in the Spectroscopy lab at JPL analyzing the spectrum of ammonia. Unlike last year however we actually got publishable results out of the effort. I used SPFit, a spectrum fitting software, to fit 1281 unpublished transitions with 2141 published transitions resulting in a linelist of 3482 transitions for the 3n2and n4+nbands of ammonia. Previously these bands had not been fit to experimental accuracy due to the complexity of ammonia’s molecular behavior, however this summer we were able to achieve what had previously never been done. Ammonia is one of the most abundant molecules in the universe so a better understanding its spectra will help astronomers understand the composition of the objects they are studying.

JPL Research 2016

In the 11th grade I made the decision to join my school’s brand new IB Diploma program, and be a member of Los Angeles Unified School District’s first ever International Baccalaureate graduating class. The challenge of being in that first ever class wasn’t that the classes were difficult, although they were, it was that all of us had no idea what was going on. Teacher and students, all of us fumbled through the two years that made up the IB program. The obstacles we faced were what made the program a truly satisfying intellectual experience. Going through the IB program gave me the courage to apply to work as an intern at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Despite my utter lack of experience I was hired. As a result I spent the summer before my freshman year at OSU analyzing lines of ammonia spectrum in order to find the lower state energies of the transitions that could not be assigned using the Hamiltonian model. This involved using a Linux based computer to fit a synthetic spectra to the observed data. The result of my ten week long internship was that I had found all of the line positions but only 30 of the 3000 lines I analyzed had trustworthy intensities. The method I was using to fit the ammonia lines did not work with such a complex molecule. As a result I learned a valuable lesson, not all research goes according to plan and much less works. Although I have no desire to be a spectroscopist, I enjoyed the experience and the chance to do research at such a young age. I have always loved the idea of exploring the universe’s secrets; I hope to pursue a PhD in Astrophysics after my time at Ohio State comes to a close.