Hawes ‘07 Wins Sigma Xi Award

Physics major Nate Hawes ’07 won the annual Sigma Xi research award, given every year to a student for distinguished research as an undergraduate student at Union. Hawes won for his presentation on “Theoretical Modeling of Exploding Black Holes,” a project he did under the supervision of Prof. Jon Marr in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Hawes was one of two Physics majors nominated for the year’s award, along with Mike Mastroianni ’07. The other two nominees were Felicia Spector ’07 and Brianne Phillips ’07.

Sigma Xi is a national honor society recognizing students involved in scientific research. The annual research award is given by the Union College chapter, based on presentations given at the Steinmetz Symposium.

Steinmetz Symposium 2007

The 17th annual Steinmetz Symposium was held on May 4-5 2007, and featured 400 Union students giving 250 scholarly presentations on topics from all academic disciplines. These included 14 students from the Department of Physics and Astronomy, presenting talks in three oral sessions and one poster session.

  • Richard Bonventre ’08, “Fiducial Cuts for the CLAS G3 Data Set”
  • Bob Marvel ’07, “Development of a Relativistic Dynamics Experiment”
  • Stephen Po-Chedley ’08, “Muon Lifetime Measurements and Determination of the Weak Force”
  • Christian Shultz ’08, “Momentum corrections for the CLAS g1c and g3a data sets”
  • Nathaniel Hawes ’07, “Theoretical Modeling of Exploding Black Holes”
  • James Read ’07, “Mapping the Magnetic Field of a Compact Radio Galaxy”
  • Crystal Smith ’08, “The Analysis of Proton- and Neutron-rich Elemental Abundances created in Outflows from Gamma-Ray Burst Accretion Disks”
  • Joshua Smith ’07, “Spectroscopy of the Orion, Eskimo, and Ghost of Jupiter Nebulae at the Union College Observatory”
  • Steve Herron ’09, “Laser Ablation in Art Restoration”
  • Matthew Lockwood ’08, “Anti-Reflective Coating of a Diode Laser System”
  • Mike Mastroianni ’07, “Radioactive Background Measurements using Atom Trap Trace Analysis”
  • Thomas Mazur ’07, “Exploring the Quantum Behavior of Light Experimentally Via Spontaneous Parametric Downconversion”
  • Luther Vucic ’07, “An Introductory Look at Sonoluminescence: Converting Sound into Light”
  • Sam Madden ’07, “SHG Characterization of NLO Dyes included within Laponite Nanoclay Films”