I am doing my mentorship at The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. This fine institution has been home to some of the world's best physicists such as J. Robert Oppenheimer (quoted on this blog) and Richard Feynman. It currently has the top undergraduate physics program in the world. Personally, I believe Oppenheimer now haunts the halls as Death, the Destroyer of Worlds, also known as Caltech homework.
My contact is Professor Mark Wise, winner of the Sakurai Prize for his Heavy Quark Effective Theory. Professor Wise has worked at Caltech for his entire career. He was also the "science consultant" on the Iron Man movies.
In total I have done 11 hours (counting those from the summer.)
What I have been doing so far is just hanging out with the people of the Particle Theory department. Granted, their idea of "hanging out" is talking about gauge symmetries, so we have been working. I have met with almost all the professors such as Clifford Cheung and Sean Carroll, and have been working with their graduates and post docs. Professor Cheung and his post doc Koji happen to be doing a project very similar to my science project, so we spent some time comparing our results. There is a lot of watching and doing math on chalkboards. I have also gotten to hear a unique perspective on physics from Sean Carroll's two grad students (the only women on the floor) and what I can expect as a female undergraduate.
I think I already emailed Professor Wise's contact info, but if not I will do so again.
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