Macalester basketball student-athlete Colin Jarvis spent most of the past summer conducting physics research in Newport News, Va., attended a physics conference earlier this November in Santa Fe and will attend another conference later this month in Chicago. Jarvis, a sophomore guard/forward from Madison, Wis., expounds on his recent research:

“ I spent ten weeks this summer conducting physics research at a low energy particle accelerator at Jefferson National Laboratory in Newport News, Va. The accelerator facility's main purpose is to explore atomic nuclei at the quark level to further develop our understanding of the constituent parts of matter. I worked in a division of Jefferson Lab called the Center for Advanced Studies of Accelerators (CASA), where I optimized part of the design for a future upgrade to the accelerator. The upgrade will give the accelerator much higher energy collisions, allowing researchers to probe even further (on smaller scales) into the structure of the atomic nucleus. My research was computational in nature; I used JLab's supercomputer to run massive simulations that tracked particle interactions in a virtually upgraded accelerator in order to optimize the design.

“As a result of my research, I am attending the American Physical Society's (APS) fall conference in Santa Fe, N.M. to present my findings. I also am a Science and Energy Research Challenge (SERCh) competition finalist -- SERCh is a national scientific poster competition open for any undergrad whose summer research was funded by the Department of Energy -- and I am going to Argonne National Lab in
Illinois to present and compete with the other SERCh finalists for scholarship money.

“My take on the experience and extra info:

“ I feel very fortunate to have been able to do this research experience the summer after my freshman year. I could not have asked for a better experience. My mentor was a great guy, both in terms of assisting my research when I would get stuck but also as a friend. We played basketball every Friday at a local community center. My research project was very successful, and I am actually continuing to work on it during the school year by telecommuting. The summer was a great learning experience, and lots of fun to be a part of and contribute to the scientific community. This has really opened my eyes to options after Mac, especially graduate studies in physics.”

--Colin Jarvis