Cal Poly Students an Irresistible Force at Physics Conferences, Competitions

Physics students Alex Kemnitz, Noah Miller and Chris Wong took home top honors at the annual American Physical Society Far West Conference, a conference that recognizes the research of scientists and students from California, Nevada and Hawaii. The conference was held in fall.

Kemnitz won first place in the Graduate Student division for his project, “Search for Ternary Fission Events and Analysis With the NIFFTE Time Projection.” Wong split first place in the Best Undergraduate Poster division for his project, “The First-Ever High Speed Video Capturing the 'Snap' Transition of a Bimetallic Disc.” And Miller took home the Steven Chu award, which recognizes outstanding undergraduate research experiments.

Miller’s research focused on improving the Fast Interaction Trigger (FIT) geometry on the A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), otherwise known as the ALICE FIT project.

“Most of what I did was trigonometry and programming. The additions I made to ALICE's main analysis software would get committed for simulations,” said Miller who worked closely with fellow physics major Patrick Steffanic and professor Jennifer Klay.

“Presenting at the conference felt pretty great and getting recognized by the amazing people there is something I won't soon forget,” he said. “Because of my privilege to present at the conference and my placement in it, I can feel confident in my abilities as a programmer and a physicist.”

Also in physics, students Seiji Hanen, Ryan Lau and Noah Sutton-Smolin took home a silver medal at the International University Physics Competition.

Nearly 200 student teams from around the world entered. The team representing Cal Poly was one of only 34 teams to place in the silver medal category, besting schools like Cornell and the University of Illinois.

“Noah, Ryan and Seiji displayed everything one would expect in a budding scientist: drive, self-motivation, independent thinking and a heavy dose of creativity,” said Prashant Srinivasan, the physics professor who led the team.

“It was certainly a job well done for these physics students,” Srinivasan said.