Ryan F

- Research Program Mentor

Bio

Project ideas

Can Dark Matter Consist Entirely of Black Holes?

Although dark matter makes up about 85% of all the matter in the universe, the identity of dark matter remains one of the greatest unsolved problems in modern-day cosmology. Recently, shocking gravitational wave observatories have discovered black holes tens to hundreds of times more massive than our Sun. In this project, you will review the scientific literature to understand whether this new class of black holes can account for dark matter. In the process, you will learn foundational astronomy techniques that have additionally played an important role in discovering exoplanets (gravitational lensing, transits, the Doppler effect, and direct imaging). Moreover, you will learn about the strengths and weaknesses of the two major classes of dark matter models (MACHOs and WIMPs). Furthermore, you will learn about the current consensus understanding for how black holes form (from primordial black holes and stellar-mass black holes, to intermediate and supermassive black holes). In this project, you will learn how to efficiently read professional scientific journal articles, perform backward and forward literature reviews, and how to write your very own scientific review article. This project is intended for 9-12th grade students. However, this project can certainly be made accessible to 6-8th grade students. This project can be increased in sophistication or scope for students who have already completed high school.

How Do Black Holes Grow?

In Richardson & Farber 2024, we found that the growth of black holes depends on the numerical methods employed. However, that previous study considered specifically hydrodynamic simulations of an isothermal, Keplerian accretion disk that transported angular momentum via an explicit isotropic viscosity. A wide range of black hole accretion disks and accretion mechanisms remain unexplored in code comparison studies. In this project, you will learn how to perform your very own astrophysics simulations. As a result, you will learn how to leverage the full power of computers from the Unix command line. You will learn how to use popular astrophysics simulation software, such as Princeton University's Athena code. You will learn Python to perform data analysis and visualization. You will learn how to use git to backup your scripts and create a public portfolio of your computational astrophysics skills. You may also learn C, C++, and/or FORTRAN to modify the simulation software source code. You may also have the opportunity to learn how to run simulations on a supercomputer. You might also learn how to effectively read scientific journal articles, and how to use LaTeX to create your very own research manuscript to be published in a world-renowned peer-reviewed journal. This project is intended for students entering or at the 11th-12th grade level and above. No prior computer programming or research experience is required. I have helped a high school student complete a similar project who had a bit of Python experience, and no Linux experience, nor experience with C/C++/FORTRAN nor LaTeX. That high school student was entering 11th grade and completed a non peer-reviewed publication in about nine months. However, students can certainly learn a wealth of computational astrophysics skills over the course of the typical 10 session program.

Advancing the State-of-the-Art in Missions to Mars

Since NASA landed its Pathfinder rover on Mars nearly 30 years ago, Martian rovers have grown significantly in sophistication and complexity. Take Perseverance, code-named Mars 2020. Weighing in at about 8000 pounds (3600 kilograms), Perseverance hosts a veritable laboratory on wheels. However, NASA is pivoting to a policy of "smaller, faster, cheaper" to advance the state-of-the-art in assessing the habitability of Mars, Europa, and Titan. Therefore, minimizing payload mass will play a crucial role in minimizing launch costs, enabling more sophisticated sensors to be included within stringent budget limits. In this project, you will study the survivability of rovers undergoing hard landings. In addition to Mars, you may study hard landings of rovers on the surfaces of the Moon, Europa, Enceladus, and Titan. As a result, you will learn key physics concepts such as gravitational potential energy, conservation of energy, and rocket physics -- don't worry, rocket science is easy in theory :) You will either build your very own prototype spacecraft (middle school to underclass high school level) or create Python scripts to simulate hard landings (sophomore-senior high school level and above). In either case, you might publish the results of your research project in a peer-reviewed journal article for middle-high school research.

AI/ML Accelerated Search for Earth 2.0

James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launched Christmas Day 2021. Since JWST generates about 250 GB of data per day, the ability to analyze the vast and ever-increasing volume of data is challenging. However, the field of machine learning (ML, also commonly referred to as artificial intelligence, AI) is exploding in popularity as an essential astrophysics data analysis skill and will play a crucial role in maximizing the science gains from JWST. In this project, you will use AI/ML techniques to characterize JWST spectral data in the search for a second Earth. As a result, you will learn how to use common AI/ML Python packages tensorflow and pytorch to train your own convolutional neural networks (CNN). You will learn the main features of astrophysical emission and absorption spectra and how to identify spectral features by hand (for generating a training set). You may also determine the effectiveness of leveraging existing large language pre-trained models, such as Deepseek, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, etc in comparison to your more tailed CNN. You will thorougly document your code using Jupyter notebooks and share your code with the world using Github. You may also write up the results of your research for publication for submission to the appropriate journal depending on your results. This project is intended for the advanced high school to advanced undergraduate level. A 6-10th grade level project might involve reviewing the literature to determine which of the 5000+ exoplanets discovered to date is most similar to Earth.

Overwhelmingly Large Telescopes: The World's Largest Telescopes of Today and Tomorrow

As of February 2025, the world's largest optical telescope is Gran Telescopio Canarias, weighing in with a primary mirror diameter of 10.4 meters. Within the next few years, the world's largest optical telescopes will triple in size, as three thirty-meter telescopes near completion. In the late 1990s, the European Space Agency proposed building a 100 meter telescope, aptly named the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL). While OWL is not currently in development, such a telescope would be able to resolve galaxies 1500 times fainter than Hubble Space Telescope (about 150 times fainter than James Webb Space Telescope can see). In this project, you will research the world's largest telescopes. In addition to (or in substitution of) the optical ground-based telescopes listed above, you might study existing and planned space-based telescopes, the largest radio arrays on Earth, and/or the Lunar Crater Telescope mission concept. As a result, you will learn the two most crucial characteristics of telescopes. You will learn fundamental astronomy concepts such as atmospheric transmission windows, interferometry, limiting magnitude, and so much more! You will write up your research for publication, likely as a review article. This project is intended to be suitable for 6th-12th grade students. No prior research experience is required. No particular mathematical, physics, or astronomy background is required, but knowing or being willing to learn algebra would be helpful. Students seeking a challenge could compare images of the Andromeda galaxy as taken by telescopes ranging from hobby-level 0.1 meter telescopes to the five hundred meter aperture spherical telescope.

Why Neptune's Moon Triton is DOOMED

In about 3.6 billion years, Neptune's moon Triton is expected to crash into Neptune. In this project, you will review the scientific literature on Neptune and it's largest moon Triton. As a result, you will learn about the major features of Neptune, as well as the major features of Triton. Importantly, you will learn why the orbits of moons decay. In addition to understanding the fate of Triton, you might predict the fate of Earth's Moon 3.6 billion years into the future. Interested students might similarly predict the future of the Pluto's moon Charon, and/or the major moons of Jupiter and Saturn. You will write up the results of your readings in the form of a scientific review article for publication. This project is intended for 6th-8th grade students, although 9th-12th grade students might also enjoy this project. No prior research experience is needed. No particular background in math or science is necessary for this project. So long as you have a curious mind and an open heart, you can learn a lot about the future of our solar system in this project!

Live Fast and Die Young: Studying Supernovae

The most massive stars in the universe live the shortest lives; after a measly 3-40 million years after birth, the biggest brightest stars in an entire galaxy reach the end of their lives. However, these stars end not with a whimper, but with a bang. Supernovae outshine all the trillion stars in a galaxy for a few short days, and recent work suggests supernovae fundamentally regulate the evolution and fate of galaxies like our Milky Way. In this project, you will learn how to perform your very own simulations of supernova explosions with the astrophysics software FLASH. Originally developed by a team of astrophysicists and computer scientists at the University of Chicago, FLASH is *the* code of choice for studying supernovae. As a result, you will learn how to use the UNIX command line to configure, compile, and perform FLASH simulations. You will learn how to use Python to analyze and visualize your FLASH simulations (using the Python packages numpy, matplotlib, yt, and more). You will learn to use git to backup your scripts, and share the code you develop with the world. You might learn how to modify FLASH's source code, which is written in FORTRAN. You may write up your results for publication in the form of a research article.

Fate of the Milky Way Galaxy: Will the World End in Fire or in Ice?

Measurements of the gas depletion time -- the amount of time it will take for star formation to consume all the gas in the Galaxy, suggests the Milky Way is currently equivalent to a 90 year-old human. That is, we think the Milky Way is about 10 billion years old, and the gas depletion time suggests the Milky Way has only about one billion more years left for star formation. On the other hand, recent observations by Hubble Space Telescope suggest the Galaxy is like an Autobot - more than meets the eye. In particular, supernova explosions appear to generate a galactic atmosphere that may mean the Milky Way is actually more equivalent to a tween - with over 90% of its lifetime of star formation to go! Then again, the Galaxy may eventually merge with the Virgo supercluster. The resulting ram pressure from the intracluster medium might strip off the Galaxy's atmosphere, ending star formation. This project can be studied at a level suitable to either (i) roughly 6th-10th grade students or (ii) entering 11th grade and above. In this project, a 6th-10th grade student might learn about the different types of galaxies in the Hubble sequence. Further, that student could learn foundational astronomy concepts such as the processes of star formation, the galactic baryon cycle, ram pressure stripping, and the Hubble law. Students will learn these concepts by reading popular science articles as well as professional astrophysics review articles. This student will synthesize their knowledge in their own review article. For students entering 11th grade the following fall and above, a student could analyze simulations modeling Milky Way-like galaxies, either in isolated settings or undergoing ram pressure stripping. You would learn how to analyze astrophysical simulation data using Python. You might publish your results in a research article.

Solving the Energy Crisis: Fusion is the Future

Today, the world is in crisis. Fossil fuels produce pollution, yet renewable energy sources, such as wind, hydrothermal, and solar, do not produce enough energy. Possibly worst of all, nuclear fission power plants can catastrophically fail, rendering vast stretches of land uninhabitable. In contrast, fusion plants cannot undergo runaway reactions; the most common design flaw is the reactor wall melting, leaking a very low density inert gas of Hydrogen and Helium, which are at absolutely safe levels for humans. Furthermore, fusion produces orders of magnitudes more energy than fossil fuels, renewable sources, or even fission. This project may be suitable for 6th-10th or 11th+ grade students. For 6th-10th grade students: you will review the state of fusion plants. You will compare the low density regime of tokamaks and stellerators (such as the International Thermonuclear Reactor in France) to the high density regime of pellets blasted by lasers (such as the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Lab). Furthermore, you will investigate a new class of pulsed power fusion plants based on impedance-matched Marx generators. You will gather your information by reading popular science articles, as well as professional peer-reviewed journal articles. You will learn how to effectively read scientific journal articles. You will synthesize your reading by writing your own scientific review article. For 11th+ grade students, you will have the opportunity to perform your very own simulations to better understand the most promising fusion concepts (and their fatal flaws). That is, you will learn how to use the FLASH software code, which is the premier code for high energy density physics. You will learn how to browse technical documentation, search the FLASH email list archives, and use large-language models to help you get started with FLASH. You will configure and run built-in FLASH problems (such as Zpinch and LaserSlab) using a Unix command line. Furthermore, you will learn how to analyze and visualize your simulations using either Python or Visit. You might write up your results for publication in a research article.

Quantum Computing for Astrophysics

Google recently made headlines claiming they performed a calculation on a quantum computer that would take the world's largest supercomputers a trillion trillion years to complete. While practical general-purpose quantum computing is still five years out by Google's estimate, adiabatic quantum computers are already shaking up the world of scientific research. In 2019, a study from Los Alamos National Lab found that adiabatic quantum computers were not yet useful for studying a specific problem called channel flow. However, quantum computers have grown tremendously in power in the past five years. Moreover, the paper itself was limited in scope. In this project, you will perform your very own astrophysics simulations on a quantum computer. You will determine whether adiabatic quantum computers are useful for channel flow yet. You might also investigate problems totally unsolvable on regular supercomputers, such as quantum gravity in the beyond the event horizon of black holes. You will learn how to read scientific literature, how to parse technical documentation, and how to program in Python. You might write up your results in a research letter for one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals. This project is intended for the advanced high school level and above. A project suitable for middle and beginning high school students might involve a literature review, comparing the quantum computers available today to those available earlier in the 21st century.

Web3: Building Blockchain Applications

The total market cap of cryptocurrencies exceeds one trillion (US) dollars. However, this third generation of the web is just beginning in terms of general user adoption. In this project, you will learn how to create decentralized web applications that utilize blockchain technology. You will learn how to code in Python, Solidity, JavaScript, as well as how to type HTML, CSS and use git. You might also learn Rust and other programming languages. You will learn how to deploy smart contracts that enable the creation of meme "coins," non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and more! At the end of this project, you will have one or more Github repositories, showcasing the applications you have developed. This project is intended for the advanced high school level and above. No programming experience is required, though you will advance faster and further if you have some programming experience already. For middle and beginning high school students, you might consider a literature review project, investigating different blockchains that can be used for building decentralized web applications. Or, you might build a discord bot that checks token ownership.

Why Bitcoin and Banks are DOOMED without Quantum-Resistant Encryption

The world's banks and blockchains such as Bitcoin share at least one common feature: they are both DOOMED once powerful quantum computers arise in the next 5-30 years. Banks use the RSA algorithm to transmit secure data, whereas Bitcoin uses an elliptic curve algorithm called secp256k1. In the same way that in the Middle Ages cannons rendered castle walls obsolete, quantum computers will render both RSA and elliptic curve algorithms completely useless. In this project, you will learn how to use cutting-edge quantum-resistant encryption algorithms to protect the future of sensitive data, from banks and bitcoin to governments and healthcare. You will learn how to use openssl bindings in Python to utilize the CRYSTALS-KYBER algorithm, selected by the National Institute for Standards & Technology (NIST) to replace RSA. You will also learn the impact quantum computers will have on symmetric key encryption, such as AES, due to Grover's algorithm. You will showcase your coding application to the world through a public Github repository. This project is intended for the advanced high school level and above. Beginning high school students might learn how to implement the Caesar cipher and simple encryption algorithms in Python. Middle school students might read about the history of encryption and present a literature review.

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Drake's Equation & Fermi's Paradox

In this project, you will learn about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). In particular, you will write your own formulation of Drake's equation to identify how many radio-emitting civilizations beyond Earth might exist within the Galaxy. You will use Fermi's paradox to help you construct or set bounds on the parameters of Drake's equation. You will write up your results in the form of a research article or literature review. This project is intended for all audiences and levels. So long as you have a curious mind, you can successfully complete this project!

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Credentials