Harvard-Smithsonian Science Research Mentoring Program
An astrophysics mentoring program for Cambridge Rindge & Latin School Students
SRMP News
Community Day
On 20 Mar, the SRMP, the CfA Science Education Department (SED) and the faculty of the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS) led a community workshop on telescope building with support from the Cambridge Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) Initiative and the Harvard Ed Portal. This event was held at the Cambridge Public Library and was open to the public; approximately 50 people attended. Activities included building and learning how to use Galileoscopes, making planispheres and an information module on the upcoming total eclipse. Free eclipse glasses were distributed to participants. The current class of SRMP students served as the Galileoscope instructors with guidance from Frank Sienkiewicz of SED. The event was organized by SRMP Co-Director Paola Domínguez Fernández (Harvard Future Faculty Leader Fellow) with support from Co-Director Andrew Szentgyorgyi, Jean Dao (Harvard Ed Portal), Sharlene Yang, Barb MacEachern (Cambridge STEAM Initiative), and Nina Nolan (City of Cambridge Office of Workforce Development). Instruction in Planisphere construction and usage was provided by Tal SebellShavit, on faculty at CRLS.
Succesful SRMP students!
Jaeyi Song has been selected as a finalist in the Regional Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (JSHS, https://jshs.org/). She is a member of last year’s Science Research Mentoring Program (SRMP) cohort and a member of the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School class of `24. She will compete nationally in New Mexico this May. This is an extremely competitive competition; 245 finalists are selected from a pool of more than 8000 applicants. The JSHS is “the STEM competition that challenges high school students from everywhere to achieve, and to build the skills that prepare them for college and career.”
Ms. Song worked with Jason Eastman to use the densities of the stars measured from the TESS transit light curves to determine the most precise radii and temperatures for the exemplar Hot Jupiter host stars HD189733 and HD209458. Her project teammate, Alexandra Mahajan, is a finalist in this year’s Regeneron Science Talent Search. Congratulations to Ms. Song on her achievement!
SAO Intern, Science Research Mentoring Program (SRMP) and Cambridge Rindge and Latin Senior, Alexandra Mahajan, has been named a top 40 finalist in the 83rd Regeneron Science Talent Search. She is among the top 2% of 2000+ amazing entrants. She iss off to Washington, DC to compete for the Finals Week, 6 - 13 March.
Alexandra is using a JWST phase curve of GJ1214 as a proof of concept for a new method to measure ~1% radii and temperatures of low mass stars. She leverages the transit and occultation timings to determine an eccentricity that is 3x better than a decade of HARPS data, then uses the stellar density from the transit duration and a dynamically calibrated Ks-mass relation to determine the stellar radius. Finally, she uses the stellar radius and the observed bolometric flux to measure the star's temperature. In addition to the Regeneron honors, she submitted a first-author paper and has received a favorable referee report and is a Co-I on a Cycle 3 JWST proposal on the same topic.
Alexanda was a member of the 2022-23 SRMP cohort and stayed on to work with Jason Eastman as an intern starting in June of 2023. She is completing her senior year at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, and has been accepted into the incoming Harvard Class of `29 this Fall.
