Grace JohnsonGrace Johnson will exercise her own curiosity and perseverance as the 2021 recipient of the Baylis Physics Research Internship.

Astrophysics and spectroscopy on agenda for research intern

The recipient of the 2021 Baylis Physics Research Internship plans to investigate the use of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy on the Mars rovers Curiosity and Perseverance.

“Astrophysics and spectroscopy are two subjects that I am extremely interested in and that I would like to pursue a career in,” says Grace Johnson, a second-year honours physics student.

The internship annually awards $1,000 to a second-year student of physics or medical physics to support their work on a research project with a faculty member in the Department of Physics.

Johnson currently possesses a 97.167 grade point average and while still in high school student worked as a co-op student in the chemistry lab of professor Simon Rondeau-Gagne. Her current research advisor is physics professor Steven Rehse.

She is excited by the opportunity the internship offers.

“Being able to gain research experience in this area of physics so early in my career would be extremely beneficial for my future, and I would enjoy it very much,” Johnson says. “I love learning about different theories and am excited to see how they are tested and used in a real-life laboratory setting.”

The goal of the internship is to expose recipients to the process of performing academic physics research and to more broadly introduce students to the activities of the Department of Physics and the people in it.

It was established by professor William Baylis and his wife Bobbye Baylis to recognize deserving first-year undergraduate students who demonstrate exceptional potential and to invest in that potential by engaging them in advanced research opportunities with a faculty mentor.

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