On a warm Wednesday evening in June, a group of undergraduates spending their summer doing research on campus have a date with their peers—and pizza.
It was all part of the Summer Research Residency, a new pilot program in the College that helped to offset the cost of meals and housing over the summer months so undergraduates could take advantage of the research opportunities made available to them. The community built in Campus North Residential Commons also provided more than 50 students the chance to connect and learn from each other. This included career talks and social events—organized by the team in Summer Session and partners across campus—to help the students build on their experience.
The students in the program during this pilot year represent a broad range of fields of inquiry.
Mansha Nigam
There’s Mansha Nigam, a rising second-year, who spent her summer working with Richard Kron, professor emeritus of astronomy and astrophysics, to digitize century-old photographic plates of the heavens taken by Edwin Hubble at Yerkes Observatory (built and long-operated by UChicago, but now an independent institution). Kron’s group is examining how the light from quasars—extraordinarily bright, extraordinarily distant galaxies—has varied over the intervening century by comparing Hubble’s plates to more modern digital images.
“These plates are physical records of the sky from over a hundred years ago,” Nigam says, “and by digitizing and analyzing them, we’re both preserving that legacy and extracting valuable data from it.”
Her project isn’t just rote copying and pasting of digital files. To provide an accurate comparison between the new and old images, she first needed to model how light traveled through the optics of the original telescope, which took a fair bit of self-study.
“It was a great surprise, though, because it gave me the chance to apply a lot of what I’d learned in my physics class last quarter in a real research setting.”
Olivia Kuang
Rising third-year Olivia Kuang works on a variety of projects in economics. On the upside: connecting theory to actual real-world human behavior: “I especially enjoy working with datasets from field experiments designed by our team. Analyzing those real-life results and drawing economic insights from them is both intellectually satisfying and practically meaningful.”
The downside: coding. Before starting this project, Kuang says, “I had very little exposure to coding, so it was all brand new. But I pushed myself to pick up the skills I needed and, over time, I was able to independently write and execute code for our analyses.”
Kuang had already lined up her position when she learned about the Summer Research Residency. For her the biggest surprise of the summer has been the atmosphere created by working with her faculty mentor, John List, the Kenneth C. Griffin Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, who is “incredibly approachable and open to everyone’s ideas and updates,” she says. “We even play song-guessing games during all our weekly meetings—this was something I never expected.”
Jiayi Wang
Jiayi Wang, AB’25, who graduated with a double major in English and economics, worked with Professor Elaine Hadley studying the historical causes of homelessness in Chicago. Wang’s research looks at both vacant houses and people experiencing homelessness—that is, homes without people and people without homes. She’s excited to explore the origins of the modern housing crisis, including “the possibility of uncovering overlooked narratives and connecting policy decisions to lived experiences on the ground.”
Staying on campus is a plus for Wang, who is working on her research while taking the last course she needs for her bachelor’s degree. This fall she starts a master’s degree in Public Policy at UChicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, which she plans to follow up with law school. Her chosen specialty: “a focus on employment law and landlord-tenant law.”
Spending the summer in Campus North is a different experience from the more typical summer sublet. “Some of my fondest memories have been made after research hours,” Nigam says. “Watching the NBA finals with friends over chocolate pancakes made by the RAs, hanging out in the 15th floor common room on weekends while snacking and catching up on work.” Campus in the summer is a new experience, too. Nigam tries to do her work in a different spot every day. The Logan Center and Kersten Physics Teaching Center are her favorites.
Kuang notes the collegiality of her residency neighbors. Whenever she went to the study lounge in North, “there was almost always someone else there working, which created an encouraging and productive atmosphere,” she says. “Being surrounded by other motivated researchers helped me stay focused and energized on my own projects.” Wang agreed that it’s motivating to know her neighbors are also focused on research. “That shared sense of purpose creates a quiet, focused atmosphere,” she says, “a space for serious academic work.”
