Measuring the stars: ASU student awarded fellowship for summer workshop in Los Alamos

Chase Hanson presented his research at the 2019 Undergraduate Research Symposium.

By Dominique Perkins |
May 02, 2019

Arizona State University physics sophomore Chase Hanson has been awarded an $8,000 fellowship to participate in the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s annual Computations Physics Student Summer Workshop.

The 10-week workshop brings together exceptional undergraduate and graduate students to work with the Los Alamos National Laboratory staff on current and exciting projects.

Hanson hopes to be working on a project involving helioseismology, which is the study of the structure and dynamics of the sun and other stars.

“I would be developing methods to calculate what is called lines of dense plasma; it details quantum phase transitions in stars," he said. “Essentially it’s really hard to understand the quantum mechanics of stars; they’re changing phases, they’re changing quantum states.”

Hanson has been working with ASU Department of Physics Assistant Professor Antia Botana, whose expertise includes a specialty in computational condensed matter physics.

He was also awarded the Wally Stoelzel Physics Scholarship for 2019 and won the Department of Physics Research Award at the 2019 Undergraduate Research Symposium for his research on “Collective theory of ferromagnetism from DFT calculations.”