Physics Mentorship Program

Brandon is an undergraduate student from Nanjing, China, with a major in Physics. His goal in signing up for a Physics Mentorship Program is to improve his resume for Master’s application.

Brandon is passionate about Physics. He is currently studying at Nanjing University majoring in Physics. His aim in this program is to gain more project experience in order to apply for a PhD program in the US.

University admission result

★ Duke University
★ University of Rochester

Scope of the program

Overall structure on the Physics Mentorship Program

This program was designed to give Brandon an experience similar to what he will find during his PhD. He was pointed towards current literature resources which he had to read, understand and critically think about.
Brandon was asked to implement data modeling using Mathematica and Vesta (crystallography software) based on that literature.
Brandon was interested on Application of Optics to physical problems. Given the remote nature of this mentorship we had to come up with a suitable, more theory-intensive, research direction.
The end goal was to perform calculations of susceptibility tensors from crystallographic parameter that could reproduce pre-existent Second Harmonic Generation data.

What challenges did he face?

Brandon met some problems dealing with the codes in Mathematica. In order to improve, he should add some parameters into the calculation codes so that the correct figures would be plotted.

How did our program help him?

To implement data modelling, Brandon learnt to use the software Vesta and gained a deeper experience with Mathematica.
As an undergraduate student, this program allowed him to explore concepts taught in graduate degrees.

Matched professor:

A Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Physics at Brown University. He has been a referee for Physical Review X, Physical Review Letters, Physics Review B and Physical Review Materials since 2016.