
This summer, more than 80 students and faculty kept campus abuzz with the hum of hands-on field and lab research. The Seaver Summer Research Community’s work covered topics in biology, health and human sciences, mechanical engineering, computer science and more disciplines across the college. With such a diversity of research projects to choose from, we spoke to some of the students about their unique summer experience. Today, we spotlight physics major Matt DuBois ‘26, mentored by assistant professor of physics Emily Hawkins.
Describe your research in a way that a high school student would understand it.
Some moons in our solar system, like Enceladus and Europa, moons of Saturn and Jupiter respectively, have icy surfaces with salty oceans underneath. NASA is interested as to whether life could exist within these oceans. Basically, hot plumes on the bottom of these oceans create nutrients that are necessary for life to form. For life to form, we need water, nutrients for life to form, but also energy to help sustain this life. On the surfaces of these moons, there are small cracks in the ice that allow for sunlight and radiation from the sun to leak into the oceans, which would provide energy for life to form. So, my research was about looking into how small, nutrient like particles travel through rotating convection systems of water to see if these nutrients of these moons could make it from the bottoms of the oceans to the tops of the oceans in order to be energized.

Why would someone outside your field be interested in your project?
Convection experiments like the one I worked on this summer are fairly rare due to how hard they are to set up, and not many people are conducting them. Continuing this research could allow scientists to discover more things about fluid systems and about the possibility of life on Enceladus and Europa, and perhaps more moons or planets within the universe.
What are some of the lessons students learn while working on research?
I learned a lot about working in a team, and that also things rarely go as planned. A great researcher should be able to think on the fly, and adapt to different circumstances as they come up. Throughout the research session this summer, there were a couple times where our plan for the project ended up needing to be changed due to malfunctions with equipment or other reasons.
How does doing research complement coursework?
For me, research goes a lot more in depth in one specific concept that could be taught in a class. While having previous knowledge on what you’re researching isn’t exactly required, it helped me a lot, and in general I think that coursework should be used as a starting ground, or as background knowledge for the research you are conducting.
What advice would you give to someone on the fence about doing research?
Research is 100% worth it.