Summer Visitors

Every summer, labs across campus and at JPL (as well as farther afield) host undergraduates eager to hone their research skills. One such avenue for growth is the 10-week program known as SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships). 

While most SURFers are Caltech students, about a quarter of the participants visit campus for the summer from other colleges across the U.S. Here we introduce two of them.

Mahlet Shiferaw
Harvard University 
LIGO 

Mentor: Physics Professor Alan Weinstein 

Research focus: Shiferaw studied the harmonics of gravitational waves: ripples in space-time produced by cosmic events such as the collisions of black holes. These waves have been detected regularly by LIGO (the Laser-Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) since 2015. Shiferaw wants to know more about higher-order modes of gravitational waves, which are similar to musical overtones. In the same way that the overtones of a piano can sound different from those of a plucked violin string, these higher-order gravitational-wave modes can reveal unique information about their sources: black holes and other objects in space. 

While LIGO cannot detect these higher-order modes at its current sensitivity, it should be able to do so in the coming years after planned upgrades to its instruments. 

Highlight: “The campus is so beautiful,” says Shiferaw. “Sometimes it feels like walking around in a huge botanical garden.” 

Takeaway: “My research will pave the way for future tests of the general theory of relativity under extreme conditions: near black holes, where gravity is strong and the speeds of particles are close to that of light,” she says. “It’s mind-blowingly cool.” 

Amy Windham 
Pasadena City College 
Division of Humanities & Social Sciences 

Mentor: English Professor Jennifer Jahner 

Research focus: Windham explored The Book of Margery Kempe, which is considered the first autobiography in the English language. The fascinating part, says Windham, is that it was written by a woman who lacked formal training in reading or writing. Kempe, a mystic and pilgrim who lived at the turn of the 15th century, dictated her story to two scribes. Windham is intrigued by what the work reveals about both female literacy and how books developed in medieval times. 

Highlight: Jahner and Windham visited the Special Collections at the UCLA Library to look at manuscripts from the period that Windham has been exploring. “Nothing replaces the experience of actually being in the presence of a 700- or 800-year-old book,” says Jahner. 

Takeaway: “I’ve become so fascinated with medieval studies,” says Windham. “This has definitely helped me shape the direction that I want to move in and opened my eyes to a whole other world of how books came to be and even how the English language evolved.”