Becca Ewing is a 21-year-old physics and math dual major, with a fire for conducting research in gravitational wave astrophysics. In high school, she thought she wanted to study biology, but half way through her freshman year at WSU, she realized she missed doing math.
“I decided to add math as a second major along with biology. I loved biology, but I quickly realized I didn’t want to be a doctor and biology research didn’t particularly interest me either,” Ewing Shared.
Ewing was taking a general physics class around this time, a class she had hated in high school, but her professor continued to persuade her to become a physics major.
“He would talk about how exciting the research was, how much math was involved, and how many jobs you could get with a physics degree. By the end of the semester, I had done a complete 180 and decided to be a physics and math dual major. The longer I’ve been in physics the happier I am with my decision,” she shared.
Since the fall semester, Ewing has been working on a senior project at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), funded by the Considine Scholarship–a scholarship for women in STEM.
“My project is on optical scattering – basically we’re looking at how light reflects off of real surfaces. We’re trying to model that phenomenon and specifically we’re looking at improving the existing models for “grazing angles”. That means when light is either shining on the surface or reflecting off the surface at a nearly parallel angle,” Ewing explained. “I’ve really enjoyed this project and we’ve had some great results that I’ll be presenting at a conference in Orlando this upcoming week. In the summer I plan to continue the project and hopefully get it published.”
Ewing also spent two months in Italy on a research experience for undergrads (NSF REU), where she studied data analysis for the Laser Interferometer Space-based Antenna (LISA) Pathfinder.
“I did some data analysis associated with improving the sensitivity of the detector. It was a great project and it reinforced my hope of getting into gravitational wave physics in the future,” she said.
After graduating in just two weeks, the next steps for Ewing include spending five or six years getting her PhD in physics at Penn State where she will study gravitational wave astrophysics. After about four years of postdocs, Ewing hopes to stay in academia and continue doing research and teaching classes.
“I’m really excited to continue doing physics research for the rest of my career. It’s exciting and varied work and it’s what I love to do. I also love sharing what I know and so I’ll look forward to teaching and mentoring students in the future,” she said.
