Ashley Lieber on the University of Arkansas’ Campus

Author: Ashley Lieber | Major: Physics | Semester: Spring 2022

After building a solid foundation in physics through my courses in high school and my first year of college, I was determined to find a mentor and get involved in research as soon as I could in my sophomore year. Towards the end of the summer of 2019, I reached out to my physics academic advisor, Dr. Julio Gea-Banacloche, a professor in the physics department, who had been extremely helpful during my first year, to garner his advice and help me in reaching out to potential faculty research mentors. Dr. Gea even accompanied me to my very first meeting with Dr. Kennefick, which was incredibly kind and quelled my nerves. When you first get into research, it can be incredibly nerve-racking to reach out to faculty members because you might not feel qualified to do research yet. The truth is, as a student, you spend much of your time learning and confirming well-established scientific findings. There has always been an answer to the questions you’ve faced, but research is an entirely different playing field. In order for you to investigate a research question, the answer cannot be known and science needs everyone’s creativity and perspective in order to progress. As my professor, Dr. Bill McComas once told me, creativity is one of the major tenets of the nature of science. The world would be a very different place if Copernicus had never flipped the model of the universe upside down and placed the Sun at the center instead of the Earth. All of this is to say that if you are curious and determined, it is never too early to start with research. Your mentor is there to guide you, and looking back, I am so incredibly grateful for the support Dr. Kennefick has provided from my sophomore year until now. She took me into her research group and I began doing novel research right away looking at the behavior of variable stars.

Later on in the spring of 2021, I wanted to expand the bounds of my research skills and begin my thesis work, so I decided, along with my mentor Dr. Kennefick, to pursue a project that was tangential to the work of a current physics Ph.D. candidate, Paul Bonney. While Paul focused his efforts on modeling the atmospheres of certain Earth-like exoplanets, I aimed to characterize the stellar flares of the M dwarf stars that host these planets. Just as the Sun flares and impacts Earth, so do these M dwarf host stars flare and affect the planets in their orbit. The search for life on planets like Earth outside of our solar system is very complex, but this work aims to help complete a part of that much larger puzzle.

This research group was dynamic and challenged me as a researcher. Since this was my thesis project, it was much more independent in nature as opposed to my earlier projects. However, even though I was independent, I was still very well supported whenever I ran into obstacles. Both Dr. Kennefick and Paul helped me to overcome these challenges whether they be technical through coding or larger in terms of the direction of the project, they were there to help every step of the way. Paul was a great aid in the actual coding of my project and the necessary troubleshooting that it required. It was by no means easy and there were times I was unsure if we would surmount the obstacles, but in the end, we finally got it to work. Additionally, Dr. Kennefick was a great resource in organizing the ‘big picture’ of the project and making sure that I didn’t get lost in the figurative weeds of coding. Because of this, the completion of this project was even more rewarding as it truly was a personal accomplishment. This is an invaluable feeling for an undergraduate researcher to have as they are just getting their start in the field of research. As a student, there is no question that it is easy to overextend and stretch ourselves too thin and I was guilty of that all too often. However, this Honors College Research Grant allowed me to scale back some of my outside responsibilities to dedicate more of myself to my research. I received tremendous support during my time at the University of Arkansas and it is the kind of support I hope to emulate and provide to my peers and any students I may mentor in the future. Research, especially astronomical research, is a never-ending field with so many great possibilities that I could not be more excited to learn about. If my time as an undergraduate and researcher has taught me anything, it would be this: if you are passionately curious about something, surround yourself with others who share that curiosity and there’s no telling what you might discover. The people make a difference, and I truly believe that the people at the University of Arkansas made a real difference in my journey to being a researching scientist.