REPU MAGAZINE N 3
2016 REPU Research Projects
2017
REPU - Physics
Pedro Cisneros - Yale University
Emonet Laboratory, USA
The research internship was done at the Emonet Laboratory, Yale
University. The research involved the quantitative study of the sensory
biological behavior of fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster).
The most important result of the internship was the development of a
computational tool which, through different techniques of computer vision
and statistical analysis, could extract behavioral patterns of the fly in the
presence of odor stimuli coming from attractive volatile chemicals.
Likewise, the tool let us identify other important behaviors, like grooming
or the interaction with other flies.
As a result, by the end of the internship, some preliminary analysis of a
mathematical model which could describe the flies' odor sensory behavior
was presented.
*Update: Pedro is currently a PhD student at UC Santa Barbara.
Gabriel Rabanal - Yale University
Wright Laboratory, USA
Neutrinos are the most abundant matter particles in the universe but
despite their ubiquity, they elude most detection mechanisms. Current
experiments exploit the quantum mechanical phenomenon of neutrino
oscillation, in which a neutrino produced with a specific lepton flavor
(electron, muon, or tau) can later be found with a different one as it travels
through space. Oscillation implies that neutrinos have mass, which
revealed physics beyond the Standard Model. This and other extensions
to the Standard Model required theories whose predictions are to be
tested. During his internship, Gabriel worked in PROSPECT, the Precision
Reactor Oscillation and SPECTrum experiment. PROSPECT will analyze
antineutrinos stemming from a nuclear reactor at short distances from it in
order to address the so-called reactor anomaly, search for the
hypothetical sterile neutrinos, and make the most precise measurement of
the antineutrino spectrum from a highly-enriched reactor core. Gabriel
was involved in the assembly of a scintillator cell and developed simulations within the CERN Geant4
framework using ROOT to optimize the geometry of a Compton spectrometer built to characterize quenching
effects.
*Update: Gabriel is currently a PhD student at Harvard University.
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