Can you tell me a little about yourself?
My name is Darren Stroupe and I am a post-baccalaureate at UNC Asheville, majoring in Physics and minoring in Astronomy & Mathematics. I’ve been studying under Prof. Britt Lundgren for about 2 1/2 years now, researching Magnesium II absorbers in quasar spectra in the UltraVISTA extragalactic field. I grew up in Michigan, but I moved to North Carolina in 1996. I went to UNC Asheville and received my first bachelors in Music Technology. In my spare time I like to play drums, piano and guitar, but mainly drums. I’ve worked in the past recording other bands, before getting into astronomy.
How did you get interested in astronomy?
Being a little bit older, my generation grew up with the space shuttles, which were really exciting and at times tragic. After having been a recording engineer for several years, a series of events occurred including receiving my first Newtonian telescope. Seeing things like globular clusters and other celestial objects really opened my eyes to the vastness of space. I had a Joseph Silk book The Big Bang for many years which I happened to pick back up. That reignited my interest in space and astronomy. One of the reasons I went back to school was to understand a lot of the math in that book. Prof. Silk actually just came to DAWN a few weeks ago to give a talk, which was pretty amazing.
What is your favorite part about Copenhagen? About DAWN?
The city has been here for so long and when you walk around the old part of the inner city you can’t help but feel this reverence for the permanency of the place and appreciate the architecture. The collective knowledge about astronomy and the early universe here at DAWN is awesome. To actually be able to work with people who are literally on the forefront of their field is humbling. I’m impressed with the sharpness of my cohort. It is good to see so many people interested in science and it gives me hope that physics and astronomy are in good hands for the future.
What motivated you to apply to an international REU?
Since research is one of my end goals, I wanted to engage with a high caliper research center. So this was a Hail Mary, but I feel really privileged to have been invited to the Cosmic Dawn Center. I’m here to do research and gain skills, but I’m learning about so many other things beyond the science along the way, including statistics, coding techniques, and software development. If this experience were in Asheville or any other place, I would have been just as excited. But the fact that it is in Copenhagen is amazing. Being in a different place can lead to thinking about things differently. I think that having an international research experience can lead to a fuller experience overall.
Can you tell me about your summer research project?
I’m working with Dr. Gabe Brammer on Hubble Space Telescope grism spectroscopy. We are developing a fast and reliable machine learning classification model to estimate the distances to galaxies that will allow us to analyze much broader samples coming through the pipeline soon.
What skills and knowledge would you like to acquire this summer?
I would like to become a better researcher and improve in all of the skills that are required to succeed, such as coding, communicating, statistical analyses, and presentation skills. I am open to learning about new astrophysics, wherever the research may lead us.
If you could have any superpower what would it be?
First of all, I would say that human limitations lead us to really strive to go beyond ourselves, which I think is inspiring. But if I could shed myself of one of those limitations, I would be able to time travel to go back in time and witness the many Earth-shaking discoveries, like Galileo seeing the moons of Jupiter and Hubble discovering cepheid variables.