Researcher of the Month
November 2014
Noel Scudder
Physics, Astronomy/Planetary Sciences majors, Honors College, Class of 2015
Research Mentors: Dr.Timothy Glotch, Geosciences
Noel Scudder is a senior in the Honors College, with a double major in Physics and Astronomy/Planetary Sciences; and a minor in Geology. Since January of 2014, he has been working with Dr. Timothy Glotch in the Geosciences Department to increase our understanding of the mineralogy of Mars from remote sensing data—in particular, developing a Hapke-based linear spectral unmixing model for CRISM data to quantitatively analyze mineralogy on the Martian surface. This work will be a part of his senior honors thesis for the Honors College. Noel’s research this past summer was supported by a NASA Mars Data Analysis grant to his mentor.
Noel plans to submit an abstract to the 2015 Lunar and Planetary Sciences Conference,
as well as present at the URECA poster symposium and Honors College symposium in the
spring. This year, he will also be applying to Ph.D. programs in planetary science.
Asked about how undergraduate research has enhanced his education, Noel reflects: “I
consider what I’m learning from the research to be just as important, or more important,
than what I’m learning in my classes. This is the kind of work I will be doing in
the future…”
Noel started out as a physics major, but his initial interest in astronomy began when
taking Astronomy 203 in freshman year with Prof. Michael Zingale, and his focus in
planetary science was in large part due to taking Astronomy 205 in sophomore year
with Prof. Alan Calder. Noel considers himself to be fortunate to get an early start
in research, working with Prof. Michael Zingale and graduate student Max Katz on testing
white dwarf binary models in his sophomore year. At SB, Noel has been four times recognized
at the 4.0 Academic Achievement ceremony, and has regularly been on the Dean’s list.
He came to SB from Sherwood HS, Sherwood, Oregon where he was class valedictorian.
Noel enjoys running, hiking, and computer gaming. Below are excerpts of her interview
with Karen Kernan, URECA Director.
Karen: Tell me a little about your research.
Noel: Right now, I’m working in the Glotch group on developing an unmixing model of spectra.
I’ve been working there since January. NASA has instruments like the CRISM spectrometer
that takes really good spectrum of the Martian surface at great resolution. From the
spectra you can infer things about what’s on the surface—you can infer if there are
hydrous minerals, if there are certain kinds of clays or other minerals…What I'm doing
is using reflectance data converted to single scattering albedo spectra, and building
a model to unmix these spectra to quantitatively get the mineral abundances and the
minerals on Mars.
My goal is to run the unmixing model over all of the pixels in a given image and get
a map of mineral abundance. The trouble is that those images are large – they have
many thousands of spectra in them. So running the model takes time over a single image.
That kind of volume is tough but I’m still in the testing stage.
How did you first get involved? What was your background for this type of research?
Previously I had done research in the Astronomy department with Prof. Mike Zingale—working
on modeling white dwarf stars. I decided I wanted to try something new. I had only
taken a couple introductory geology classes previously, but I knew planetary science
was something I wanted to explore. So I emailed Dr. Glotch and asked him if he had
any openings and he said yes. He gave me this project to work on, and it has turned
out to be something that really fit my interests well and was a nice segue into planetary
science. A lot of it is physics based – using optics, and physical theory of how light
scatters from surfaces, how it’s absorbed depending on the type of mineral, the size
of the grains that the light is reflecting off of and all that sort of thing. It wasn’t
as far off from my physics major as it could have been.
I had to learn a new computer language called Davinci– it was built out of ASU for
specifically these kinds of computations dealing with spectroscopy. And it was a little
difficult in the beginning. I spent a good deal of the first part of the spring semester
learning that and learning the kind of functions that were built into Davinci. My
model calls upon an older model meant to deconvolve thermal emission spectra.
What is Professor Glotch like as a mentor?
He’s the best mentor I could have asked for. At the start I really needed a lot of
guidance because I was coming straight into geosciences. That was very tough – getting
right into a whole other field on how to view things, and seeing a bunch of frightening
equations that I had never seen before from graduate level textbooks. He was very
helpful in helping me learn the computer language and explaining the concepts to me
that I wasn’t familiar with.
A lot of it is that he lets me be pretty independent in what I want to do, how I want
to test my models. We meet every week– both individually, and then as a group where
we all get together and get each other up to date on what we’re working on. He taught
me how to use the reflectance spectroscopy lab down the hall so I could take spectra
of these samples.
Sounds like you have become much more comfortable with the work now.
Yes, as soon as I started working on the actual project, it became a lot easier. I
had to learn everything I needed to about it before I could even start interpreting
the results. And n ow too, I find that I can be of help to others in the group based
on the work I’ve done on the unmixing model ...
I was originally working with these spectra from Mars. We don’t have solutions for
them, we don’t know what the actual abundances are, though we know what kinds of minerals
should be present. I remember early on asking, “Do you have results I can compare
this with?” (…which we didn’t). So what I’m doing right now is to take reflectance
spectra of laboratory mixtures where I know everything about the minerals that went
into them and their grain sizes and convert them to single scattering albedo and unmix
them and see what kind of results I get so I have a baseline to test my model’s accuracy
on.
What are your future plans?
I’m planning on applying to graduate school – hoping to do more with spectroscopy
and planetary sciences.
How does what you learn from research build on what you learn from coursework?
I consider what I’m learning from the research to be just as important, or more important,
than what I’m learning in my classes. This is the kind of work I will be doing in
the future…But the two go hand in hand. Right now I’m taking a remote sensing class--
Just the other day, we talked about spectra unmixing, which gave me a great perspective
on my work that I didn’t have before. …For my current project, I need to convert my reflectance data into other units. There’s no real clear cut
way on how to that. There are multiple equations in the literature…in general, it’s
very non-linear and it’s difficult to convert one directly to the other. But I’m going
to be attempting a root finding method that I learned in my Physics 277 class –Computations
for physics and astronomy. So drawing on classes that I’ve taken, and having my physics
background, especially programming, is definitely helpful for the research I’m doing.
It's great that you were able to dedicate the summer to research.
This summer was extremely helpful to developing my code. There is something to be
said for doing work and research singularly and not having to worry about classes
and being able to devote all your time to that in the summer. It was very helpful!
What advice do you have for other students?
When I came in I was hesitant to ask professors if they had positions for research
because I thought I’d be getting in their way ...but Prof. Zingale actually asked
me (at the end of the semester when I was taking AST 203) if I wanted to do research
with him. I feel really lucky that I was able to get started when I did. My advice
though is to look up professors and email them and just ask. And I would also add
that you shouldn't be afraid to switch groups if your interests change.
How did you first know you wanted to go in a planetary science direction?
It was a story of shifting interests. I came in as a physics major. I had heard about
the physics department when I first came in as a freshman from Oregon. And I had taken
an introductory astronomy class just for fun and I really liked it. I continued with
the more in-depth Astronomy 203 where I met my first research advisor Michael Zingale,
and in sophomore year I went on to Astronomy 205. I found that my interests were going
a little more in that direction. Then I took intro geology class junior year and decided
that planetary science was where I wanted to go.
I’m happy with how SB turned out for me. The smaller size of the astronomy group was
very nice for me as well as the larger size of the physics department. I’m considering
returning here for graduate school.