Jesse Hart
Multimessenger astronomy combines gravitational waves and electromagnetic observations to study cosmic events. Due to multimessenger methods, binary neutron star mergers are believed to be the progenitors of the mysterious short gamma ray bursts (sGRBs) observed in telescopes. The joint detection of a gravitational wave (GW) with an associated sGRB demonstrated the potential of GW and sGRB observations to study the progenitors and environments of compact object mergers. However, only one confirmed joint detection exists, leaving sGRB emission mechanisms and their progenitors unclear. The Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) is a […]
Andrew Nguyen
In experimental sciences, effectively extracting “signals” hidden in noisy data is a constant challenge. Often, this data is “mixed” from several hidden subpopulations. For example, consider radii measurements of newly discovered exoplanets: we may not know how many distinct types of exoplanets exist, how common each type is, nor characteristics of each type (e.g., average radii). Currently, a well-established method called Non-Parametric Maximum Likelihood Estimation (NPMLE) is capable of isolating these signals. However, it extends poorly into high-dimensional data and lacks “uncertainty quantification,” (UQ) meaning that it cannot tell scientists […]
Aaron Zeng
Serpentinization is a low-temperature hydration reaction in which water infiltrates rocks rich in ferromagnesian minerals (those containing iron and/or magnesium), causing chemical alterations and producing new materials including serpentinite, brucite, etc. This reaction can cause volumetric expansion of the host rock, generating internal stress and in turn creating fracture networks within these rocks. Although such systems are well studied in terms of analyzing fracture patterns and quantifying generated stress, little research has been done regarding the influence of reaction-induced stress (RIS) on fracture development in relation to other external stresses […]
Eyouel Abate
On Earth, sunlight reflected from our planet softly illuminates the Moon’s dark side, a phenomenon known as Earthshine. My project explores whether a similar effect occurs at Mars, where reflected sunlight from the planet may create a subtle hidden signal in data from NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft—a phenomenon I refer to as “Mars-shine.” The MAVEN Solar Energetic Particle (SEP) instrument was originally designed to detect high-energy electrons and protons produced by solar activity, yet its measurements also contain unexplained background signals. I will investigate whether some of this signal changes systematically […]
John Hu
My research examines how algorithmic pricing influences labor supply in gig economy platforms like Uber. When demand is high, Uber raises prices through “surge pricing” to attract more drivers. While economic theory predicts that higher pay should increase labor supply, it is unclear whether these price incentives actually bring more drivers onto the platform or simply shift existing drivers across locations. Using publicly available ride-hailing data from New York City, I will analyze how trip activity changes across neighborhoods and time periods with different demand conditions. By focusing on dense […]
Emily Bell
Cellular automata are rule-based systems in which each cell updates its state based on its neighbors, and despite their simplicity, they can generate surprisingly rich and complex patterns. This project asks what happens when those rules run not on classical bits, but on qubits: the building blocks of a quantum computer. On a five-qubit superconducting processor, we implement classical cellular automata using mid-circuit measurement and real-time feedforward, where the system reads the state of neighboring qubits mid-computation and immediately conditions its next step on the outcome. Unlike prior work that […]
Adrian Fry
The dollar auction was developed by economist Martin Shubik as an example of how immediate decisions which seem reasonable can lead to irrational choices in the long run. The form of the auction is as follows: A dollar bill is auctioned to n players who may bid in ascending five cent increments. In a typical round, any player except for the current highest bidder can place a bid which is five cents higher than the current highest bid. If multiple players bid at once, the bid is assigned to one […]
Francis Waligora
Although satellite-based remote sensing has revolutionized the mapping of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations and air quality, identifying its localized emission sources and sinks remains challenging. High operational costs of satellites and the lack of spatial resolution limits finding of emission sources in complex urban environments. This limitation is particularly important for methane, whose urban emissions arise from diverse sources, making them difficult to detect and attribute. This project will perform a spatiotemporal analysis of atmospheric methane variability in urban environments using a network of calibrated low-cost sensors. Though each sensor […]
Andy Bass
Anxiety is a common and often debilitating condition, yet we still lack tools to track how it changes in the brain in real time. Recent research has identified brief bursts of coordinated activity between the amygdala and hippocampus in the beta frequency range that appear to reflect moment-to-moment changes in anxiety. These beta bursts are observed in both humans and animal models and increase just before animals avoid potentially threatening environments. My project asks whether these bursts are all the same or whether they represent different patterns of communication across […]
Haofan Wu
My project investigates a sharper form of Gaussian convergence behind the Central Limit Theorem, one of the foundational results of probability theory. The theorem says that when many independent random effects are averaged together, their normalized sum becomes increasingly bell-shaped. However, weak convergence—that is, convergence in distribution—can miss finer structures, especially rare-event behavior in the tails of a distribution. I will study this phenomenon through the Log-Sobolev inequality, a powerful tool in modern probability, information theory, and analysis that measures how strongly a distribution controls entropy and concentration. A natural […]