A Very GREAT Quarantine

First off, I’d like to say that the GREAT puns are back and better than ever. And secondly, welcome to the first blog post from the 2020 cohort and greetings from Costa Rica! Just kidding; I’m currently writing this from my home in Freehold, NJ. Unfortunately due to COVID-19, we are unable to travel to Costa Rica this summer and will be engaging in our research remotely. But the group and I are still excited to get this head start on our project and hopefully visit in the future to do some follow-up work and exploring of our own!

My name is Anirudh and I’ll be starting my junior year at Rutgers this Fall. If you want to know more about me, I suppose you can refer to my bio under the “People” tab. One of my majors is planetary physics so I’ll be working with Blakley and Oscar on geophysics research relating to gravity in the region. Much of our work will be in data analysis since we’re unable to perform field work at this time (but as they say, the future is bright!). Our first online meeting was last week where we started learning some background content and techniques we’ll be using throughout the summer. Specifically, one problem we’re looking at is how the observed gravity fields in the region differ from the standard gravity field values from the ideal mathematical model, and what these differences are caused by.

This is my second research project at Rutgers. Last year I had the pleasure of being a part of a sustainable design project on duckweed based filtration for fish farming. I focused mainly on experimental control, set-up, and implementation to test different variables and improve the system. I’m excited to apply this experience, as well as my physics knowledge to the GREAT project!

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Until next week... in the meantime, here’s just a few things I’ve been doing closer to home this summer instead of traveling:

Delaware Water Gap and Manasquan Beach - it's not Costa Rica, but it is hills, valleys, and ocean nonetheless!