Lunching with the 2024 SPS Summer Interns

Summers at AIP wouldn’t be complete without our talented and inspiring Society of Physics Students (SPS) interns. With a diverse range of skills, our interns give us a glimpse into the bright future ahead in the physical sciences. Their summers were full of exciting and engaging work at organizations like SPS, NIST, and STScI.

I was lucky enough to tag along for a few of the intern events throughout summer 2024. On their first day, they taught me about Flemings Right Hand Rule, and on their last day I found out that they’d all be ready to go for gold if spikeball becomes an Olympic sport. While getting to know them a little more through the summer, I learned what inspired their areas of study and how their SPS internships have set them up for their next academic or career move.

I spoke with...

Maia Chandler
Maia was the AAPT/SOCK intern and doubled as our in-house dragonfly expert. Maia attended the 2024 AAPT conference and says it was the most rewarding experience for the summer because she was able to learn from science teachers how she can continue her journey of being an effective and captivating science communicator to a K-12 audience. Her final presentation gave us a deep and concise dive into the physics of dragonflies, which included dragonfly prototypes and a live demonstration from her fellow interns. Maia got to show her artistic abilities as the designer of this year’s SPS intern shirt.

Reidyn Wingate
Reidyn was the APS Education Programs Intern. Reidyn credits Neil deGrasse Tyson as one of his inspirations to go into this field and says seeing Black people in physics had a large impact on him. Passionate about outreach in the physical sciences, Reidyn also attended the AAPT conference this summer, and his final presentation focused on ways to better understand students’ needs and motivations through “The Persona Project.” For Reidyn, the most rewarding part of his internship experience has been meeting many people from different backgrounds who are all rooting for the interns’ successes.

Brynn Schierenbeck
Brynn was a NIST Research Intern working with Josh Pomeroy this summer, who she says is a great example that physicists are goofy at heart. A two-time SPS intern, she loves that AIP and SPS offer many different opportunities and paths you can take to expand your comfort zone and grow as a professional. Brynn’s summer was filled with exploring direct bonding methods for quantum chip integration onto a circuit board, and her final presentation gave us an in-depth look at her successes and lessons learned. Her advice to future interns is to bring a drying rack with you, because it is one of those little things that you don’t think about until you start washing your dishes.

Kai Hostetter-Habib
Kai was the AIP Center for History of Physics/Neils Bohr Library & Archives intern. Passionate about diversity in the physical sciences, Kai advocates for underrepresented people in the physics world. His final presentation highlighted past and present underrepresented trailblazers in the industry such as Frank E. Kameny, James Pollock, K. Renee Horton, and Jen J. Eldridge. Kai’s advice to future interns is to take full advantage of exploring the D.C. area and says from free concerts to hiking along the Appalachian Trail, there is so much you can do here that you can’t do in other parts of the country.

This is just a glimpse of who a few of our 2024 interns are and I encourage you to check out the entire 2024 SPS intern-cohort’s blogs so you can truly see the summer through their eyes.