RSAA Summer Scholars
Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue35 1–31 December 2022
The summer student program at RSAA has a long history of bringing advanced undergraduate students to Mount Stromlo to collaborate with our academic staff. In fact, many of our own staff (including Prof. Ken Freeman) came through the program themselves. This year we’re delighted to welcome a new round of summer scholars back to RSAA: Joel Montgomery, Grace Blomfield, Alex Fan, Sam He, Jason Price, and Luka Mijnarends. You can find their brief introductions below. Please help make them feel welcome while they here with us on Mount Stromlo!
“Hello, I’m Joel Montgomery. I am currently studying a bachelor’s of engineering in mechatronics at ECU in Perth and completing an internship at the Mt Stromlo Observatory. Seeing the opportunity to come over to work at the observatory was one I could not miss, so I was very excited to receive this scholarship. I was born in Melbourne but raised in Perth most of my life. Aside from spending my time at university and studying, I love a good movie (most recent favorite is “Shutter Island”) or hanging out with mates. In the future I would like to see myself working on projects involving the energy sector, automation, or robotics because not only would I be supported by my degree, but I’ve always had an interest in clean energy and/or automation. Thank you for letting me come over to have this experience and I look forward to meeting everyone here.”
“Hi! My name is Grace Blomfield and I am a Science/Music Double Degree student about to enter my third year here at the ANU. I love finding ways to combine my passion for astrophysics with my music, and several of my compositions are influenced by my physics knowledge and research. I have always known I wanted to be a scientist, but I became particularly fascinated with astrophysics when I was nine-years-old, after watching one of those YouTube videos that compares the sizes of different stars in the universe. Over 10 years later, and I am fortunate enough to be working on a project in stellar astronomy and archaeology! It’s funny how these things go. I am incredibly excited for the opportunity to gain research experience, and I look forward to meeting some wonderful people during this program.”
“Hi, I’m Alex Fan. I am a student on my way to finish my master degree in electrical engineering and looking to enter the embedded system and autonomous control profession. My capstone project involves using kalman filter to use doppler sensor network to track object trajectories. I also actively contribute to various open source projects and maintain some Gentoo Linux packages myself. I have always been a scifi Fan since childhood. As my surname may suggest, if I am a "Fan" of something, it must be scifi. My favorite scifi work is Crest of Stars by Hiroyuki Morioka, which is unique partly in its realistic romance and vivid depiction of cultural differences/shock in space era. Apart from scifi, I also love origami and home beer brewing, and recently started to learn Blender for scifi stuff. I feel really excited to take this opportunity to work as a summer scholar and collaborate with many amazing people at Mount Stromlo!”
“Hello everyone, my name is Junsheng (Sam) He and I am delighted to take part in the summer research program here at Mt Stromlo. My interest in Astrophysics and Telescopes stemmed from a night back in my high school: I failed to see the meteor shower, but saw a weird bright fuzzy cloud in my camera, which now I know is the Orion Nebula. Now I am a second-year student at the University of Melbourne, and my interest in the heavenly bodies really keeps me going on the path of studying physics, in particular astrophysics. This is also my primary motivation to join this program. Recently I am also into bird watching and just started learning biking, if there’s any bird watching or cycling tips at Canberra, please let me know.”
“Hi, I’m Jason. My bachelors in Astrophysics and Chemistry at the ANU led me to fall in love with radio astronomy. After taking a captivating course on radiative transfer and fluid dynamics of astrophysical objects, I pursued the field further with an undergraduate research project, studying magnetic fields in the Small Magellanic Cloud with the Australian (SKA) pathfinder (ASKAP). My undergraduate degree at the ANU has further ignited my passion and thirst to solve the largest problems in the universe. It has led me to research at the space mining company Helios in Israel and discover the beauty of science. I am incredibly privileged and grateful to undertake the RSAA summer scholarship program, where I will continue research in radio astronomy through the study of the multi-phase neutral interstellar medium.”
“Hi, I’m Luka. I have just finished with my Bachelors degree at the ANU- with a double degree in Science and Arts, majoring in astrophysics and sociology (yes, it is a weird combo!), and I'm planning on doing an honours year with the RSAA in 2023. In the meantime, I am a part of the RSAA Summer Scholarship program, working with Emily Wisnioski to understand the relationship between kinematics and morphology in high redshift galaxies. I'm really excited to see where my project takes me over the next few months and to make the most of the amazing opportunities and community at the RSAA. When I'm not up at Stromlo, I'm hoping to make the most of the beautiful long days by spending as much time outside as possible- and getting to the coast as often as I can!”
