Chelen Johnson
Stellar Teachers and Rebull with SPHEREx -- All-Volunteer NITARP 2026 team studying stars with SPHEREx.
I was surprised [during the summer visit] with the speed with which my students increased their proficiency with the tools we are using -- especially Python programming! My students acted very independently and hardly ever needed me to suggest something for them to do next; many times they were already anticipating the next tasks and trying to figure out how to do it!
I assumed that [research] would require a great deal of data analysis, what I didn’t grasp until after this[, my first AAS] meeting was how focused and detailed the analysis would be. The steps in understanding that are gained through the analysis are much smaller than I anticipated they would be for the amount of work that is done.
[...]creativity has to be a underling personality trait for scientists
