By Andrea Yan and Henry Sun Cover image credit: https://lsa.umich.edu/chem/people/faculty/gshultz.html In a packed Kirkpatrick Lecture Hall on October 18th, students and faculty in the Chemistry Department gathered for the week’s Cheminar series, which addressed an unconventional topic. Ginger Shultz, the week’s speaker, is an Associate Professor of Chemistry and Associate Chair for Education Development and…
Photo and article by Maya Maaloul What makes changes in data significant? How do we, as humans with subjective opinions, decide this? What methods can detect these changes the best, and what if we can’t find the best tool? During an Amherst College Statistics and Data Science (SDS) Colloquium on September 24, Ben Baumer, a…
By Ryogo Katahira Klara Matuszewska ’26 won a Chambliss Astronomy Achievement Student Award for 2024. The award is to “recognize exemplary research by undergraduate and graduate students” and is selected by the American Astronomical Society (AAS). Matuszekska is a physics and astronomy double major from Warsaw, Poland and works in Professor Daniella Bardalez Gagliuffi’s research…
On Friday, April 5, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner Moungi Bawendi lectured at Amherst College. The lecture was held in Lipton lecture hall and was titled “Quantum magic and quantum dots: a synthesis unlocks a nano-world of opportunities.” Bawendi opened his talk by explaining how electrons have different properties at the quantum level. “So…
Photo by Maria Stenzel By Olivia Fann As prospective math majors may have noticed, a certain department was notably absent from 2024 SURF opportunities. This year’s lineup of nine disciplines and 36 total labs participating in Amherst’s Summer Science Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) did not include any members of the math faculty, raising some questions…
By Nora Lowe You’re wiping rainwater from your brow. The damp darkness is only interrupted by the occasional dull, red light, moving to and fro. No, this spooky scene isn’t an alien abduction, but it is still a big night. In fact, it is the Big Night, when spotted salamanders migrate to reproduce, and Amherst…
By Kyle Hur and Nora Lowe Ed Yong is a science journalist and the author of two New York Times bestsellers. He has received national recognition for his science writing, including winning the Pulitzer Prize in explanatory journalism and the Victor Cohn Prize for medical science reporting. The Amherst STEM Network had the pleasure of…
Cover image courtesy of ESA: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2007/07/The_Bullet_Cluster2 Article by Olivia Fann and Fernanda On October 17, 2023, the bottom floor of the Science Center was filled with professors and students enjoying refreshments and conversation. It was time for the weekly Physics Colloquium, a public talk given by a visiting scholar on a topic relevant to their…
By Ryogo Katahira On October 6, a man in his thirties wearing a hoodie and jeans entered a mechanics course classroom in the Science Center. He glanced at the blackboard with its simple energy diagrams while students and professors filed in. His demeanor was entirely casual, but he was the subject of the highly anticipated…
Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a prime topic for research due to its vast impact on memory and cognitive decline. In recent years, there has been a surge of information regarding AD research, including reports of fraud from highly cited studies and a new potential treatment. The following article will break down these aspects and offer…