Summer 2024

This summer, the BOBA Lab had 3 students participate in the SURF program, plus 1 student who helped make this whole website!

SURF students Nini Guerrero, Sam Johar, and Sam Kleiman all did fantastic work over the 8-week SURF program. They started the summer with an astro “bootcamp” jointly held with a number of other astro labs in the Five Colleges, and they participated in weekly skills tutorials and lunch talk/journal club discussions at UMass. Along with their own research projects (post coming soon), they found time to pursue other interests: Sam J. joined a machine shop course, Sam K. started working as an Amherst College Observatory manager, and Nini’s team won at SURF trivia night!

We also did a bunch of lab activities: movie night (we watched Contact and boo’ed our least favorite characters), bowling (we’re not very good, but we did win a worm on a string at the arcade), and tie-dye (we made matching lab shirts)! And, of course, we got celebratory boba on the last day of SURF.

Sam Ramirez also worked hard this summer to develop this website and design our new lab logo! Thanks, Sam R., for your wonderful work!

Finally, we’ve had a few other folks join the lab: Leo Barba, a PhD student at UMass, and Kinsey Cronin, a rising senior at Amherst and a Greg Call intern. Welcome to Leo and Kinsey!