When Carl Sagan once said, “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff,” he meant it literally! Nearly all the atoms that make up us, and everything around us, are created in the fiery death of exploding stars. PhD Candidate Sam Usman will talk about how these elements are made, how we learn about them and what’s left to be uncovered.
Talk is included with general admission!
Sam Usman is a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago. During her undergrad and masters programs, she did research on gravitational waves with LIGO. She has since moved from the dark side to the light, using optical telescopes to observe stars in Milky Way globular clusters and the outer halo. For her thesis, she studies chemical patterns unique to dense star clusters and their remnants. In her free time, she enjoys doing agility courses with her dog, making ceramic mugs and vases, competing in Brazilian jiu jitsu and playing games with her wife.