This REU program was funded through NSF PHY-1852581.
Six students participated in the UC Davis Physics REU in summer 2020.
Research Projects (more details)
Since COVID-19 forced the program to run remotely, all projects were computational. We also stopped accepting students in early March, as shutdowns began, resulting in a much smaller program than usual. Several students who had originally planned on experimental projects were reassigned to entirely different work, in one case with a different research advisor.
Computational Workshop
For the first four weeks of the summer, students spent three hours a day in a computational workshop run by Dr. John Mahoney. The workshop introduced students to Python. This was useful for those who had little or no prior programming background, but many of the exercises were open-ended enough that even the more experienced programmers learned some interesting physics. Dr. Mahoney also introduced Jupyter notebooks and graphing, which were handy for some of the projects. The workshop included many opportunities for work in small groups, which helped the students get to know each other -- although not nearly as well as in other years when the students live together for the summer.
Other Activities
We had weekly lunch meetings with some physics GRE practice, informal research talks by students, discussions by former REU students of their career paths in the intervening years, and an overview of graduate school and the admissions process. One special event was a talk by Professor Mark Bowick of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara. The UCSB REU program kindly allowed our students to attend as well.Near the end of the program, we held a symposium jointly with the UCSB REU. Each student gave a 15-minute research presentation. Combining this event across the programs let students hear about research different from any of the UC Davis projects. Students later prepared final write-ups about their projects.