Banana Slugs Attend CUWiP 2020

This past weekend, the banana slugs went to CUWiP 2020 at UC Irvine with more than 20 UC Santa Cruz undergraduate physics and astronomy majors participating in the conference this year. This conference is an APS Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics. Students traveled to the UC Irvine, which was one of twelve sites in North America hosting the conference simultaneously this year. Many panels were organized to discuss important topics such as applying to graduate school, imposter syndrome, and careers in industry, academia, and national labs. For many of the attendees from UC Santa Cruz, this was their first CUWiP conference.

Many students from UC Santa Cruz presented their research as well including Siuling Pau on "Spectroscopic and Mechanical Characterization of Indoor Aerosols Using Peak Force Infrared Spectroscopy", Dane Cross on "Examining the Self Interaction of Dark Matter Through Brightest Cluster Galaxy Offsets", Erika Strasburger on "Constraining the Asymmetry of Type Ia Supernovae Using Late-time Spectra" and Violet Piper on "Constraints on the Final Fermions in an Exotic Higgs Decay". They all did an outstanding job on giving us a little insight into their exciting work in various research areas in physics and astronomy!

In addition, our very own faculty adviser, Prof. Tesla Jeltema spoke on the panel for Defining Success as a Woman in Physics. The discussion served as a refreshing reminder that success can mean a multitude of things for each and every student in physics whether that's from the smallest of triumphs, to the largest of achievements. Calibrating our own measure of successes is a difficult task but is nonetheless an essential part of growing as both a womxn in physics but also as a person.

This year we were very fortunate to have financial support for our students to attend this conference from the American Physical Society (APS), the Physics Department, and Women in Physics and Astronomy (WiPA). Upon reflection, we are very grateful to have had the opportunity to meet many passionate womxn in the field of physics and astronomy and very much look forward to the next CUWiP at our very own campus!