• Brooke Owens Fellow, Class of 2024

• Scripps College, Self-Designed Astrophysics Major, ‘24

• Host Institution: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

• Mentor: Lori Glaze

• Brookie Mentor: Christina Dong

Nadia Schwartz Bolef is a fourth-year undergraduate at Scripps College in Claremont, CA majoring in Astrophysics and minoring in Dance. She has always been fascinated by the stars, and once she saw the first EHT image of the black hole at the center of galaxy M87 in 2019, that fascination blossomed into a passion for learning more about the universe through astrophysics and astronomy.

At Scripps, Nadia self-designed an astrophysics major and has pursued physics research since her first year. She has worked with Dr. Sarah Marzen and Dr. Janet Sheung on biophysics research including modeling neural networks and studying transportation within the cytoskeleton of the cell. In 2023 she attended an REU at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she worked with Dr. Peter Timbie to design, build, and test elements of a phased array radio antenna for 21-cm line intensity mapping. Her work from that summer was presented at the AAS 243rd conference meeting and she continues it as her thesis back at Scripps.

Nadia is very passionate about making math and science accessible to all. She works as a tutor both in the community and at the Claremont Mckenna Murty Sunak Quantitative and Computing Lab. In her tutoring she aims to make math and physics topics understandable for everyone by developing teaching techniques that are unique to each student. She has also worked as a Student Leader at STEP UP, a program run through the American Physical Society that aims to inspire young women to pursue physics in college. As a Student Leader, Nadia organized outreach activities to spread access to the STEP UP classroom resources.

Outside of research, Nadia is an active member of the dance community at Scripps, and regularly performs in the Scripps Dance Department performances in contemporary and modern pieces. She has also choreographed two works that have been performed at the college. In one of those works, Nadia combined her passion for physics and dance by focusing the movement on embodying the linearity of time and multiple dimensions.

As a Brooke Owens fellow, Nadia is very excited to join the Space Exploration Sector at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab for the summer of 2024.