Congratulations to 2023 Follette Lab Seniors!

Resilient young physicists

Follette Lab seniors Cailin Plunkett (left) and Alyssa Cordero (right) successfully completed, presented, and defended their undergraduate theses and will be graduating this month with their well-earned degrees in physics! Cailin and Alyssa were both first year students when the world shut down due to COVID and they were sent home. It hasn’t been the easiest path through college for them, but they’ve bounced back remarkably, as scientists and as resilient humans.

Alyssa Cordero ‘23

Alyssa’s thesis involved improving predictions for the detectability of accretion features in NIR spectra of accreting brown dwarfs with Alyssa taught herself to use the JWST ETC and made key improvements to a JWST Cycle 2 proposal last fall. Although that proposal was not accepted, Alyssa’s thesis results will be highlighted in our Cycle 3 resubmission., and we think it will have a really good shot this time around! 

Cailin (center) introuducing Alyssa (left) at the Amherst College Physics and Astronomy Department’s thesis talks

Cailin Plunkett ‘23

In Cailin’s thesis, which won the Five College Astronomy Department’s Mary Daly Irvine prize, she developed and implemented a new method for estimating underlying populations of protoplanets from high-contrast imaging contrast curves and detection statistics. She was even able to boil down her highly technical thesis into a three minute presentation for the Amherst College Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, where she received the “audience choice” award among the 10 finalists. 

Alyssa (right) introducing Cailin (left) at the Amherst College Physics and Astronomy Department’s thesis talks

Congratulations Alyssa and Cailin! We’ll miss you around here.