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Summer Visit - 2025 - HIPS-AGaiN

The summer visit to Caltech is 4 days long and is the only time during the year of work when all the participants on the team come together in person to work intensively on the data. Generally, each educator may bring up to two students to the summer visit that are paid for by NITARP, and they may raise funds to bring two more. The teams work at Caltech; the summer visit typically includes a half-day tour of JPL, which is a favorite site for group photos. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

The HIPS-AGaiN team came to visit in July 2025. The 4 core team educators attended, plus 6 students.

Quotes

  • Shared, in-person, experiences lead to strong groups and strong groups lead to great results. I feel connected to my group on such a higher level now.
  • There is no substitute for in-person experience. We bonded and grew as a team. We were where the action happens and it kind of made everything real.
  • I feel like one of the most surprising things I learned was how much we don’t know about the universe, but also how far we can get by relying on the laws of physics. I liked learning how to talk about AGNs in a way that left room for ambiguity. For instance, how we are using the dusty torus model for reverberation mapping, but with the acknowledgement that it might not be viewing angle or attenuation by the dusty torus that is preventing us from seeing the blue bump in type 2 AGNs. I like acknowledging and navigating those unknowns—it makes me really excited!
  • [student:] in this stage, being wrong is not the same as failure. It is entirely meant to be a learning experience, so it'd be pointless if you knew everything walking in. Also, explanations do not have to sink in immediately. Even if you ask for clarification, and it doesn't cement itself immediately, the information is just part of a path toward a fuller understanding. True understanding takes time.
  • [student:] I was expecting that the first couple of days would be a bit like acclimating to a foreign country, with all the science I needed to grow comfortable in. I knew that those first few days would be taxing, but by the end of the summer visit, I felt comfortable in myself and my knowledge of what we learned.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2025 - HIPS-AGaiN