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My Project Journey

Coming into MARC, I had no idea what field I wanted to study. I dug through a ton of different fields and possible projects, but most came up fairly dry. My first love was an amazing paper about mapping and modeling the interior geometry of lava tubes by looking at their magnetic anomalies and gradients, a topic I loved and became a little obsessed with. Sadly, I had to scrap that idea after none of the authors responded to my emails. After that, I went through a phase of looking at the effects of autonomous cars on city congestion through mesoscopic traffic simulations, which felt slightly unreasonable for me to contribute to.From there, after a brief stint in pigeon visual networks, I stumbled upon a set of papers called The SAGA Survey. Briefly, the survey aimed to "measure the distribution of satellite galaxies around 100 systems analogous to the Milky Way" and hopefully put our own Milky Way in context with other analog host galaxies. This was completely fascinating to me, and it made me realize that astronomy as a field was not as inaccessible as I had once thought. I had my first MARC Zoom meeting with one of the coauthors of The SAGA Survey, which was a huge milestone for me. While it never panned out and I eventually lost contact with the person I talked to, the meeting inspired me to start reading many more astronomy papers and delving deep into what the field had to offer. Some of my favorites include one discussing the possible tidal demise of a Kepler system and one searching for neutrinos from solar flares using the KamLAND detector.

Concurrently with all of this, I had been doing weekly Zoom meetings throughout the fall, winter, and early spring with Dr. Steve Bryson of the NASA Ames Research Center. These meetings were invaluable, as the information we covered comprises the very basis of our entire project. Past just that, learning the basic concepts of astronomy and exoplanet research from a leading astrophysicist who played a large role in the Kepler Mission was a joy in itself. His expertise and patience in these first meetings are what made me truly fall in love with astronomy. After I felt comfortable enough with the material, I was invited to join Tor Svendsen's MARC project, which Dr. Bryson was also serving as a mentor for. Broadly, his project aimed to analyze high versus low Gaia RUWE and its effects on exoplanet false positive probabilities. While our final paper's focus had to be shifted due to semi-inconclusive data and a time crunch, it still served as an amazing learning experience that taught me the intricacies of scientific research and working as a team. We will start discussing what I'll do for my own research after his paper is finished and (hopefully) published. While all of this was happening, I randomly found a 5-minute video from Vox that almost completely changed my project vision overnight. Entitled "How trail designers build good hikes", the video was my introduction to the world of recreational ecology, or the study of human impacts (hiking, camping) on a wilderness landscape. It greatly interested me, partly because the prospect of doing fieldwork for my project in a literal field sounded really funny. After watching the video and looking over some of the papers that were discussed, I emailed the expert who was interviewed for the original Vox video: Dr. Jeff Marion, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist and Adjunct Professor at Virginia Tech. Surprisingly, he actually responded and our first Zoom meeting lasted for three hours. While my initial interest was in analyzing hiking trail sustainability, our project has since shifted to be more centered on campsites and how they can be optimally placed to prevent unnecessary impacts. We have lofty hopes of incorporating mobile phone locational data into our study, which could hopefully be used in the future as an analog for manual use counts.

Currently, my plan is to pursue both a project with Dr. Bryson in exoplanet astronomy and a separate one with Dr. Marion in recreational ecology. While I understand that this is highly unusual for a MARC student to attempt, I believe that with the right time management and a sacrificial offering of my senior year sleep schedule, it is achievable. Considering that the fieldwork portion of my project with Dr. Marion will be finished by October at the latest, I will have the entire rest of the year to analyze and write. In addition, Dr. Bryson's work is entirely computer-based, meaning that the only obstacle I will have to deal with will be managing my time effectively in order to stay on top of both projects and ensure that I don't make any scientists mad at me.

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