Stronger than a locomotive, mentorship powers WVU student’s krypton research
WVU undergraduate student Sam Stalnaker (right) and faculty member Thomas Steinberger use lasers to study gases and predict how they’ll behave in outer space. Mentoring relationships like theirs help students graduate and thrive. (WVU Photo/Micaela Morrissette)
During his first semester at West Virginia University, Sam Stalnaker felt bewildered and a little overwhelmed when he started working in Oleg Jefimenko Distinguished Professor Earl Scime’s physics and astronomy lab.
Born and mostly raised in central California before completing high school in the green forests of Webster County, Stalnaker had arrived at WVU “with no physics knowledge at all,” he said.
“Asking the graduate students in Earl’s lab the same question a hundred times is what really helped. I had to wrap my mind around what was happening in the research, but also figure out fundamental things like how all the lab equipment worked. Slowly, I started building up the information I needed to understand the experiments.”
His first and strongest mentor that semester was Thomas Steinberger, then a newly minted research assistant professor who’d just completed his WVU postdoctoral residency.
“Every 10 minutes I had a question for Tommy,” Stalnaker said. “What something did, what something was — Tommy was my go-to.”
WVU senior Sam Stalnaker (WVU Photo/Micaela Morrissette)
Steinberger, now an assistant professor, realized swiftly Stalnaker was someone he could “really trust” in the lab — especially when working with lasers.
“Sam’s attention to detail when using advanced optical diagnostics was well beyond what I typically expect from students so early in their research careers,” Steinberger said. “Four years down the road, and Sam has developed several new analysis codes for our work and taken lead on some of our more complex experiments.”
According to Cinthia Pacheco, director of the WVU Office of Undergraduate Research, the relationships undergraduate students develop with mentors like Steinberger matter.
“For students who do undergraduate research, the benefits of mentorship are significant,” Pacheco said. “Students challenged to reach their full potential by mentors who cultivate community and camaraderie within their research spaces are far more likely than students without quality mentorship to persist in their majors and complete their degrees.”
Stalnaker is now a senior in his final semester, working with Steinberger and Scime in the Center for KINETIC Plasma Physics within the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. There, they use lasers to study gases, including the ionized gases known as “plasma.” One application of their work is space propulsion — how spacecraft accelerate and move around in the vacuum of space.
Their primary focus is PHASMA, the “PHAse Space Mapping” experiment, which relies on a complex assemblage of vacuum pumps and electromagnets to shoot jets of plasma into the air, guide them with a magnetic field, and measure them as they attract each other and merge. PHASMA could contribute to clean energy generated through nuclear fusion and to predicting the effects of space weather and solar storms on Earth.
But all the researchers have their own projects, too, with which everyone pitches in to help as needed. Stalnaker has built relationships with graduate students Elias Bartolo, Katey Stevenson and Mikal Dufor, as well as postdoctoral researcher Jake McLaughlin. They collaborate not only on experiments, but on writing up their findings for peer-reviewed journals. Stalnaker often takes the lead on analyzing data and preparing the initial draft of a paper, asking his mentors for feedback about what’s missing and the craft of academic writing.
He’s also preparing to present on the group’s behalf in November at the annual conference of the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics, held in Long Beach, California.
“I’m presenting our research using a diagnostic technique called ‘two-photon absorption laser-induced fluorescence.’ We have a gas, krypton, made from single atoms. We inject a laser beam at a specific wavelength of light, and that wavelength gets absorbed by the electrons in the atoms. When they emit a new photon from that process, we observe that and collect it. That’s our signal, and it tells us how much or how fast the gas is moving and how hot the gas is. I’m using it to measure and map the exhaust plume of a satellite thruster,” Stalnaker said.
“Watching everything happening in the lab and having that guidance from the grad students and postdocs is really cool. I’m helping them with their work, but I’m also asking questions and learning about the science behind what they’re doing. They’ve helped me understand how our experiments work and to develop the skills I’ll need in grad school.”
Steinberger, Stalnaker’s original mentor, wasn’t many years out of graduate school himself when he and Stalnaker began working together. Now, he said, mentoring is one of the best parts of his job:
“Working with students like Sam pushes me to think more deeply about the science. He has a unique way of looking at problems and asks questions that often lead me to consider things from a new angle. Getting to watch students develop while continuing to grow myself — it’s the best of both worlds.”
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