Last Saturday UA joined MSU and Ole Miss for an intramural, student-lead symposium. Symposia and conferences are important opportunities to present your own work and keep up on what is newest in the field, as well as make connections with other scientists. COVID disrupted a lot of these social-educational gatherings, so we at PAGSA jumped at the chance to help our students practice presenting their research. Pictured above is the group shot of the event (left). Thank you again to the PGSA of MSU, who put on an amazing event, including best presentation and poster contests!

Pictured above and on the right are Micheal Zengel and Riley Nold, undergraduate students from UA who won best poster for their work on Heusler compounds. These compounds are analogous to the materials used in transistors, which often consist of 2-element crystalline structures. Heusler compounds are made from 3 elements, and can exhibit important quantum properties related to spintronics. Zengel and Nold used computer modeling to predict the properties of different Heusler materials to aid in developing and applying exciting new technologies. Congratulations to them both!

On Monday, March 6 this week Wenhao Li defended his dissertation on post-merger galaxies, and became Dr. Li! Mergers commonly trigger both star formation quenching and active galactic nuclei (AGN). By analyzing the star formation history and neutral hydrogen covering fraction of many post-merger galaxies, Wenhao was able to show that star formation quenching is more directly related to the merging behavior than to the ensuing AGN activity.

Dr. Wenhao Li has exciting career prospects, and is considering either entering the private industry in China or continuing with two proposals accepted by NuSTAR and Chandra in 2022. As an observer, Li says one of the most interesting parts of his research is creating a pipeline to take raw observational data such as flux and derive properties of physical interest, such as gas covering fractions and star formation rate. These derived properties have to be properly presented, scaled, and colored to make an accurate and convincing case, as Dr. Li has for the connection between mergers, AGN, and star formation rates.

 The Physics and Astronomy Graduate Student Association is happy to announce we've been invited to a student-lead research symposium at Mississippi State University. The symposium will take place on March 25, in Hilbun Hall (pictured). Graduate and undergraduate students are welcome. PAGSA will be arranging some transportation, stay tuned for details.

If you plan to attend you present, the official registration form is here:

MSU Symposium Registration

NOTE: The Doodle poll sent out previously was for a rough headcount to tell MSU. This is the real registration form!

Here's the announcement about the event from PGSA at MSU with additional details:

MSU Symposium Announcement

Please register by March 18. iPosters must be emailed to [email protected] by March 23, with the subject line:

"Poster_Title / Author_Name".

This is an excellent opportunity to collaborate and meet new, fellow scientists. It's also a great opportunity to practice going to a conference is you've never been before, as it's a low pressure environment in which to share your research. Hope to see you all there!