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March 21, 2023 outreach

IGC grad Rachael Huxford writes about the “I am STEM” winners

IGC grad Rachael Huxford writes about the “I am STEM” winners

IGC grad student Rachael Huxford, a science communication intern for the Eberly College of Science, conducted an interview with two 'I AM STEM' winners. The I AM STEM speaking contest was designed to help Penn State's Eberly College of Science students develop and share stories of their science journey. Winners of the contest have been keynote speakers at the college’s annual ENVISION: STEM Career Day Supporting Young Women event where they have been able to inspire other burgeoning STEM minds. Other contest objectives include developing science communication abilities and identifying and showcasing Eberly College of Science students with inspiring, authentic STEM stories.
Additional fall 2022 participants included Eberly College of Science undergraduate students Basma AlMahmood, Ariella Biney, and Emma Khoury, and the IGC's own graduate student Unnati Akhouri.

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About our wordmark
Monica Rincon Ramirez

The IGC wordmark was created by Monica Rincon Ramirez while she was a graduate student at the Institute. Monica enjoys drawing new connections between fundamental theory and observations. Her graduate work included general relativity, loop quantum gravity, and quantum fields in cosmological backgrounds; her thesis focused on effective quantum corrections to gravitational phenomena from spinfoams and applications to cosmology. She received her PhD in 2024.

The wordmark symbolizes the scope of research at the IGC. The base represents quantum gravity, evoking the quantum geometrical picture from spinfoams and loop quantum gravity — approaches studied at the Center for Fundamental Theory. The middle shows galaxies embedded in a smooth surface characteristic of spacetime in general relativity and the larger physical scales studied at the Center for Theoretical and Observational Cosmology. The top curves to an extreme representing a supermassive black hole accompanied by an energetic jet, with a binary black hole pair nearby — the high-energy phenomena studied at the Center for Multimessenger Astrophysics.