Cicely’s Nomination
I would like to nominate Cicely Motamedi for an OSCAR Student Excellence Award. Under the auspices of an URSP award, she began research with me in the Summer 2022. She used a pair of atomic magnetometers, to measure both the absolute orientation and polarization (linear, circular, elliptical) of radio-frequency magnetic fields. The project involved lasers and fiber coupling, electronics and field coils, the use of a phase-sensitive radio-frequency spectrometer, and beta-version atomic magnetometers from Twinleaf. Cicely quickly mastered all elements, overcoming several equipment failures, and had taken the bulk of her data by the end of the summer. She clearly has the makings of a great experimentalist, and is in the top 5% of undergraduates who have worked with me.
During the fall 2022, Cicely, wrote up a journal publication on her summer work, which has recently been submitted to Physical Review Applied. She is a skilled writer with a clear voice and an organized way of thinking. Not only did she work on writing this semester, but she mastered the more theoretical aspects of her research, modifying the Bloch equations for her particular experimental parameters and mapping that on to the complex analysis required for her data. Cicely also wrote her own data analysis code, encompassing both time-domain and frequency-domain data, for the research.
In conclusion, Cicely Motamedi, through her hard work, creativity, and superb reasoning, exemplifies a student participating in research.