Every summer, students from across the disciplines participate in research and other projects. The Libraries are proud to provide students with an opportunity to share their research and learn about the amazing work happening across campus and the world. This Research Guide spotlights current student summer research and serves as an archive of past contributions.
Email Outreach Librarian Abbie Weil at aweil1@swarthmore.edu with the following. Send us your submission by August 23, 2024!
Peace Praxis Lab is a platform dedicated to making key, critical, actionable insights from Peace Studies scholarship. This summer's team is made up of Hannah Breithaupt '26, Alina Wu '26, and Crystal Secaira '25.
Brandon Mickelson is spending the summer doing research at Montana State University in the Optical Remote Sensing Laboratory with Dr. Joseph A. Shaw.
Thermal cameras are useful tools for wildfire science. Flying thermal cameras on drones over prescribed fire sites is optimal, but thermal effects from wind while flying can change the camera's reading. Brandon’s job is to characterize this response through both lab and field testing. He designed an experiment to demonstrate the response and built a drone mount for the thermal camera. Their work will conclude with recommendations for mitigating wind effects during flight. They intend for their work in remote sensing and the development of next gen smart sensors to further aid fire scientists in their work.
Seen here: A thermal photo of Brandon.
Brandon setting up a thermal camera.
A chart of a lab trial.
Lizzie Culp '26 is spending the summer working as the dramaturgy intern at Hedgerow Theatre, the oldest repertory theater in America, and only a seven minute drive from Swarthmore College.
Lizzie has spent much of the summer at the UPenn archives, looking through the extensive collection of Hedgerow materials, which recently reached their 101st anniversary, in order to develop a historical narrative that can help inform the theatrical work the theater is engaged in today, and plan for the next hundred years! This summer Hedgerow is putting on a queer twist on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream in collaboration with Mauckingbird Theater Company. Lizzie has been working on finding materials for the lobby display for the production, as well as assisting with production and technical work for the set of the show.
Seen here: A still from this summer’s production.
Original stage design for the production.
Historical newspaper coverage of the theater.
Mina is doing research at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Quantum Physics in New York City.
Mina’s project is about using tensor decompositions for computationally efficient quantum many body system energy calculations. Previously only the energy of the hydrogen atom has been computed exactly, and this system only has one electron. Mina is working to find an accurate way to compute the energy for larger systems, such as water clusters. To do this, she used a tensor network to store data about the system and tested different methods of decomposing (approximating) it for data analysis. One method is to decompose each tensor individually, but that causes large propagation of error. Mina’s team developed a new method to decompose the tensor network as a whole, and found high levels of accuracy in the energy calculations.
Seen here: Mina in the Center for Computational Quantum Physics.
A plot of error in energy calculation vs the rank of the decomposition. Orange represents decomposition of individual tensors and blue represents our new method of decomposing the tensor network as a whole. The new method generates significantly less error.
Representations of tensors. In this project, we used 4d tensors to store data and compute energy.
Zhen, Mia, Iyin, and Mojisoluwa are working under Pyschology Professor Ann Renninger to study children's science learning. The team uses literature reviews, daily workshop observations, interviews, and surveys to assess how the learning environment in the Science for Kids (SFK) summer workshops affects rising middle schoolers' interest and sense of belonging in science. This research focuses on members of the Chester Children's Choir (CCC). Over five weeks, they collect and analyze data to provide insights aimed at improving the SFK program for future participants.
Seen here: Students from CCC conducting a supervised experiment.
A student from the CCC presents their findings in a poster session.
Two accomplished CCC students happy with their poster.
