APS Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics

Cadets Le and Dear, along with PaNE faculty members Dr. Pfenning and Dr. Fekete, attended a three-day conference for undergraduate women in physics at Princeton University. The conference showcased research done by and career opportunities available to women in physics and related fields. Conference events attended included lab tours, a variety of workshops and “Hot Topics” presentations, a poster session for undergraduates, as well as plenary talks and a keynote address. Participants had the opportunity to network and interact with over 200 fellow undergraduate women physicists as well as a variety of industrial and academic leaders. Cadet Le described her experience at the conference in the following way: “It was an interesting experience to be able to interact with other like-minded women and be able to contribute to the never-ending growth of the Physics community.” Upon returning to USMA, Cadet Dear stated: “CUWiP was a great way to connect with female physicists because we are such a small community and the support all the women at different points in their career offered each other was inspiring.” The keynote address, given by Dr. Nergis Mavalvala, related to one of the major physics discoveries of 2016, namely the successful detection of gravitational waves. Dr. Mavalvala’s early research, devising an automatic alignment system for an extremely precise, although extremely large, instrument (the interferometer mirrors are 40 kilograms each and separated by 4 kilometers) contributed to the design of the instrument credited with proving Einstein’s general theory of relativity by detecting gravitational waves for the first time.