Education & Outreach
More than 600 seventh- to-tenth- grade girls told to reach for the stars
“Don’t be scared to keep pushing forward until you achieve your dream.” So said aeronautical engineer Aprille Ericsson, the first African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Howard University, to more than 600 seventh- to tenth-grade girls at the PPPL Young Women’s Conference. “You guys are very capable of so many ideas and I’m depending on you,” Ericsson, the project manager or engineer for numerous instruments on NASA mission, said in keynote remarks.
The conference, organized by PPPL and held annually at Princeton University, had a serious purpose: inspiring young women to enter Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields. The students, from schools all over New Jersey and from Pennsylvania, spent the day doing hands-on science activities at more than 30 exhibits at Princeton’s Frick Chemistry Laboratory. They heard talks by female engineers, and watched colorful chemistry experiments before coming together for Ericsson’s address.
Participants got to test substances on a soiled car seat to determine if the substance was (simulated) blood. They tried out 3-D goggles and built models of the DNA of a virus. “They explored a lot of new science topics,” said organizer Deedee Ortiz, the program administrator in PPPL’s Science Education Department. “This is an opportunity that the majority of these girls would never have otherwise.”
“It’s all cool science,” said Annie Dykstra, an eighth-grader from John Witherspoon Middle School in Princeton.
Her teacher, Janet Gaudino, was equally enthusiastic. I love it and I know the girls love it,” she said. “There are so many activities and all it takes is one booth for a girl to say, ‘I want to do that.’ You can’t manufacture that level of engagement in a class.”
PPPL engineer Nicole Allen, right, helps student build a bridge out of popsicle sticks
Eighth grader Annie Dykstra tries out the static-electricity producing Van de Graaff generator
Arturo Dominguez, center, with the students in the Workshop for Plasma Physics at Princeton University
Dominguez, left, and Jeremiah Williams of Wittenberg University, right, taught plasma physics to faculty members from, left, Morgan State University, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Florida Atlantic University, Winston Salem State University and Tougaloo College
Workshops for diverse faculty and students
The Science Education Department held a series of plasma physics workshops for faculty from minority-serving institutions and for underserved students. Arturo Dominguez, senior program leader in Science Education, led the events. In the faculty workshop, Dominguez taught plasma physics theory to five faculty members from historically black college and Hispanic-serving institutions.
“The idea is to get them comfortable with plasma physics as a topic they can cover in advanced labs and as a platform to show phenomenon in lower division physics course and really get their students excited and knowledgeable about it,” Dominguez said.
The program was similar to the Alpha Immersion course that Dominguez also taught in which professors learn to incorporate plasma physics into their curricula.
In the Workshop in Plasma Physics for Undergraduates, aimed at underrepresented students, Dominguez led an introduction to plasma physics and fusion energy. “There’s a real need for diversification,” Dominguez said, “and we think that targeted approaches like these are a chance to get our message of plasma science and fusion out to communities that have historically not been reached as much.”
Nathaniel Barbour, right, a SULI student from Yale University, discusses his research at the poster session
Maria Lysandrou, a high school intern from Indiana who is entering the University of Chicago, displays her poster on “Modifications to the Hall Probes in the Magneto-Rotational Instability Machine"
Young scientists show off hands-on research projects at PPPL
For Dhruvit Patel, a rising senior majoring in mechanical engineering and physics at Rutgers University, the 10 weeks he spent at PPPL last summer were a welcome opportunity to do hands-on research.
He spent the time working on a nozzle that can be used to coat the inner wall of a tokamak – a plasma fusion device – with liquid metal. “I learned the majority of things that really have to happen before you begin the experiment,” he said. “I learned a lot about how to think scientifically.”
Patel was one of 21 students in the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) program to take part in poster session that wrapped up the summer program at PPPL. Also taking part were Community College Internship (CCI) program students, engineering interns, and high school interns, bringing the total number of participants to 32. The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science funds both programs.
“I’m very proud of them,” said Deedee Ortiz, the Science Education program coordinator, who organizes the internship programs at PPPL. “It’s impressive. They work on very challenging projects.”
Nathaniel Barbour, a SULI program participant and senior majoring in physics at Yale University, said he has been interested in plasma physics since high school. When he met PPPL physicist Arturo Dominguez, a Science Education senior program leader, at a conference for the National Society of Black Physicists, “it was like finding the mother ship,” Barbour said.
Barbour said he learned a lot about machine learning on his project designing a machine learning program that uses data from lower currents in plasma to predict high currents that can cause disruptions in fusion experiments.
The internship also helped him see a clearer career path, Barbour said. “I always wanted to work in fusion some day, I just didn’t know how to get there,” he said. “One of the things I’ve taken away from the program is there’s so many areas that have to be solved for fusion to become a reality.”
Students go head-to-head in the regional science bowl competition
High school and middle school teams battled it out for the right to compete in the national finals during the regional competition of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s National Science Bowl ® organized by the PPPL Office of Communications and Public Outreach. The 2017 event brought together students from New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware to answer challenging questions in science, technology and mathematics in a quiz show-type double elimination format. Regional winners were the West Windsor-Plainsboro South High School for the third straight year and the John Witherspoon Middle School of Princeton.
High school winner West Windsor-Plainsboro South with banner and trophy