Congratulations to Yale Physics graduate students Aaron Greenberg, Andrew Neely, and Carlton Smith, and undergraduate student Rose Powers; who were each awarded a 2024 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP).
In addition, we congratulate graduate student Emily Pottebaum, undergraduate Catherine Zhang, and undergraduate alum Tristan Weaver, ‘23 for being awarded honorable mentions.
The NSF GRFP recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited US institutions. The five-year fellowship includes three years of financial support including an annual stipend of $37,000 and a cost of education allowance of $16,000 to the institution. Click here for a list of awardees.
Brief bios of this year’s awardees are included below:
Fellows
Aaron Greenberg is is a second year graduate student working with Eduardo Higino da Silva Neto, assistant professor of physics and a member of the Energy Sciences Institute. Aaron graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh, where he worked with professor Jeremy Levy studying complex oxide heterostructures. At Yale, Aaron’s research interests include unconventional superconductors and symmetry breaking phases in materials. In addition to his research, Aaron has volunteered in outreach events such as the Yale Physics Olympics and Halloween Demo Show; events aimed at local area high school students to introduce them to physics in a fun and engaging way.
da Silva Neto, assistant professor of physics, said, “Aaron joined our group in 2022 and has made various contributions since then. His work spans from hardware design and development to recent advanced studies on kagome superconductors using the scanning tunneling microscope, including thorough data analysis. Already at this stage of his career he shows incredible versatility, which makes him an exceptionally effective researcher. Aaron is also very dedicated to outreach and teaching, which includes his role in designing events for the Physics Olympics over the past two years. Overall, Aaron embodies the qualities of a promising scientist and teacher.”
Andrew Neely is a second year PhD student working with assistant professor Charles Brown on an experiment building and studying optical quasicrystals of ultracold lithium. Andrew graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2020 with a B.S. in Chemistry before working full-time in a cold atoms group building a kilowatt-level laser system to measure the Fine-Structure constant with atom interferometry as a probe of physics beyond the Standard Model. Andrew has also been tackling department and campus culture and climate issues through GSAC and Local 33. Through this work, Andrew is taking active steps in making a career in scientific research more accessible to talented individuals from a broader set of backgrounds.
Charles Brown, assistant professor of physics, stated, “I’m proud of Andrew for winning the NSF GRFP fellowship. The fellowship is a testament to Andrew’s great potential as an independent scientific researcher, and acknowledges the positive impact they have made—and are likely to continue to make—outside of research.”
Rose Powers is a Physics (Intensive) major working with Sarah Demers, professor of physics and a member of Yale’s Wright Lab. Rose’s research in the area of high-energy particle experiment focuses mainly on software development for event reconstruction and trigger systems—she spent two summers at Fermilab with the Mu2e experiment and is currently collaborating on software R&D for the future Muon Collider effort. Rose is involved with the physics community on campus as a part of Yale’s Society of Physics Students (SPS) branch, where she served as outreach co-chair during the 2022-23 academic year. She is passionate about physics education; and serving as a peer tutor for the PHYS200/201 course sequence has been a highlight of her college years. Rose is deeply honored to be offered the NSF GRFP and is excited to continue contributing to muon collider research and development (R&D) in the coming years.
Demers said, “I’ve had the privilege of working with Rose for several years. She began her work in my group on Mu2e, an experiment at Fermilab that will hunt for charged lepton flavor violation, with contributions to the trigger for the experiment. More recently she has been carrying out studies investigating the feasibility of a detector at a potential future muon collider. She did remarkable work in both contexts, building up a fan club among my colleagues, who expressed shock regularly that she wasn’t already a graduate student. She is not only a phenomenal and independent researcher, but she also contributes to our department as a peer tutor and mentor. The NSF chose very well!”
Carlton Smith is a second year graduate student in the Yale Physics, Engineering, and Biology (PEB) Program. Carlton received undergraduate degrees in physics and mathematics at the University of Florida. Carlton performed computational neuroscience research under the mentorship of Dmitri Chklovskii and David Lipshutz at the Flatiron Institute, and Shreya Saxena, now an assistant professor at Yale. Carlton is currently doing research as a part of a collaborative project with Yale Physics assistant professors Christopher Lynn and Dr. Benjamin Machta, searching for violations of the Fluctuation Dissipation Theorem in the nervous system of the C. Elegans worm. Carlton also recently completed a two year term on the Student Council of the National Society of Black Physicists, where he co-organized the Innovate Seminar Series and other programming.
Smith stated, “I’m extremely grateful to Prof. Chklovskii and Dr. Lipshutz at the Flatiron Institute, who nurtured my then nascent interest in theoretical neuroscience; Prof. Saxena, who guided me through the graduate admissions process and offers continued mentorship; Prof. Machta and Prof. Lynn who helped me conceptualize my project and continue to provide both moral support to me and technical advice for the project; my family at the National Society of Black Physicists; and most importantly, my graduate cohort friends, non-academic friends, and family, who’ve often believed in me even when I didn’t”.
Lynn added, “Carlton’s been a huge addition to our group. He brings joy, humility, and laughter to every interaction he has. When he approaches a problem, he dives deep into the details to make sure he understands every aspect. Beyond research, he’s engaged in a number of impressive outreach efforts that are broadening the scope of physics as a community and family”.
In addition Machta said, “Carleton has a contagious curiosity- he can be counted on to ask the most interesting question in a seminar or lab meeting. Carlton brings experience with and passion for understanding how complex neural dynamics control animal behaviors. I am very excited to see how his current work unfolds, looking at how perturbations and noise propagate through the tiny brains of nematodes.”
Honorable Mentions
- Emily Pottebaum is a second year graduate student and a member of Yale’s Wright Lab working with professors Karsten Heeger (advisor) and Reina Maruyama on the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) and the CUORE Upgrade with Particle Identification (CUPID) experiments, which are searching for neutrinoless double beta decay. Outside of research, Emily serves on the Gender Representation in Physics (GRiP) Executive Board and is active in both the Yale Pathways to Science and Yale Physics Department’s outreach programs.
- Tristan Weaver ’23 completed his B.S. in December 2022 with a double major in Physics (Int.) and Mathematics (Int.). Since then, he has worked as a post-baccalaureate researcher with the astronomy department. His advisors are Meg Urry, with whom he has worked since 2019, and Daisuke Nagai, with whom he has worked since 2023. His NSF proposal, “Joint X-ray-FIR Spectroscopy to Probe Scale of AGN Obscuration”, is an extension to a paper written with the Urry Group currently awaiting review by the Astrophysical Journal. His current research interests include cosmology, Large-Scale Structure, and ML. In Fall 2024, he will begin his PhD at Penn State University in Astronomy and Astrophysics with a minor in Computational Science studying theoretical cosmology under Donghui Jeong.
- Undergraduate student Catherine Zhang is a physics & geosciences major.