I’m Ana Humphrey, Exoplanet Explorer, and This Is How I Work

This is our first “How I work” with a student – and who is this student. Ana Humphrey this year won the Regeneron Science Talent Searc h, the oldest and most prestigious national science and math competition for high school students. She was awarded a grand prize of $ 250,000 for developing a mathematical model “to determine the existence and likely location of exoplanets missed by the Kepler space telescope.” Ana is also an environmental activist and founder and president of the Watershed Warriors Initiative – so when she doesn’t find planets outside of our solar system, she’s just, you know, saving the Earth. This is how it works.

Name: Ana Humphrey

Location: Alexandria, Virginia

Current job: Exoplanet explorer, graduate of TC Williams High School.

Current computer: Acer Aspire 7 (for my research and personal use) and high school Chromebook Lenovo 300e (for school use)

Current mobile device: iPhone

One word that best describes how you work: intense.

First of all, tell us a little about your past and how you got where you are now.

I am in high school and moonlight as an exoplanet explorer. Exoplanets are planets orbiting stars outside our solar system. For the past two years, I have been looking for exoplanets that we might have missed with the Kepler space telescope in systems where we have already detected several planets. The Kepler Space Telescope finds exoplanets using the transit method, which measures the decrease in brightness of a star when a passing planet blocks its light (such as an eclipse). However, exoplanets that are tilted outside our “plane of view” or are too small to block out much light may go undetected. Based on the accepted hypothesis that planetary formation creates dynamically packed systems, I used mathematical modeling to find unpacked spaces and determine if a new planet could fit between known nearby ones without breaking their orbits. I have identified 560 locations that may have contained missing planets and identified 96 as prime targets based on the location of other planets in their systems.

I did this project primarily as a science fair project, but expanded last year to also speak at astrophysical conferences. I recently won the Regeneron Science Talent Search, a Society of Science and Community program in which top high school students from across the country compete for their research projects and scientific ability.

(And no, if you had told me a few years ago, I would have been where I am now, I would definitely not have believed you!)

Take us through a recent school day.

Life has been a little crazy lately as the school district drew to a close and I was missing school more often than usual to attend my research activities. Last Thursday, I woke up at 6:40 am to go to school early at 7:30 am to take the three branches of government exam. When the school day started at 8:35 am, I got permission to skip my first lesson so that I could write an acid-base chemistry test. I then went to an English class where we discussed Death of a Salesman and then to lunch where I was preparing for a quiz I was doing on court cases later that day. Then, in chemistry class, I took notes during a lecture on electrochemistry. Then I went to my final lesson in government and took the court case quiz. After finishing the quiz, I left school early to drive an hour to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where I had a media interview and a meeting with my mentor.

What are your plans for college?

In the fall, I will be attending Harvard as part of a 2023 course. I plan to study astrophysics and get my PhD.

What apps, gadgets or tools, besides your phone, can’t you live without?

Gmail and Outlook apps:

Between my personal, school, club and corporate email, I am associated with five different email accounts. Having mobile apps for these accounts helps me catch incoming emails in a convenient place on my phone and quickly send emails when I am not and cannot access my laptop.

Matlab:

I’ve been programming in Matlab ever since I started teaching it to myself in 8th grade for a science fair project. So far, it is my favorite language for quantitative analysis of images and data. My main research projects over the years, including the one I submitted to STS, were mostly programmed in Matlab.

Sheets (both Excel and Google Sheets):

I’ll just say: I love spreadsheets. As a visually and quantitatively inclined person, spreadsheets are the perfect combination of features that allow me to simultaneously analyze large datasets and visually validate them. My first major science fair project in 7th grade was a mathematical model built in a spreadsheet. When I started my college search, I used spreadsheets to create a personalized college ranking system based on my preference for academic qualities. Whenever I have a question about something in my day to day life, I go to the spreadsheet to aggregate data and determine trends using formulas and conditional formatting.

Google and Apple Calendars:

I use Google Calendar to keep track of all my tasks with due dates, and Apple Calendar on my phone to keep track of my phone calls, appointments, and appointments. I keep two separate calendars because I treat my Google Calendar more like a to-do list and my Apple Calendar like a traditional calendar, and the two platforms have different features that work best for my two different purposes.

Grammar:

Grammarly Chrome Extensions are great because they spell check most of the text fields in Chrome. This is especially useful on Google Docs, which I use all the time for school assignments and email. I also have a Grammarly keyboard installed on my phone to do a quick double spell check on any emails I send from my phone.

Zotero:

I use Zotero to store and organize journal articles for my research. It has great web extensions that download citation information, abstract and article PDF (if available) with the click of a button. It also has great tools for sorting, marking, and annotating papers, and can be accessed both offline from a PC / Mac app and online through a website.

How is your workplace arranged?

Mobile. I move constantly depending on my schedule that day. My favorite places to work are the dining table, the large table in the guest / office room, and the local coffee shop (especially St. Elmo’s and Nectar in the Del Rey area of ​​Alexandria). I also spend time in my teachers’ classroom (depending on which of my teachers is late for a given school day) or some other convenient location if I am away from home. Wherever I am, I need a large surface so I can spread out and keep my laptop (s), notebooks, papers and / or textbooks in front of me and in plain sight.

What’s your favorite shortcut or hack?

I love keyboard shortcuts. They’re so simple, but they add a lot to my efficiency, whether it’s programming, searching for magazine articles, switching between school assignments, or writing emails. My favorites are the classics. I believe people usually know them or not, so here they are just in case (they are valid on my laptops. There are several other keyboard shortcuts on Mac):

Generally:

• Alt + Tab -> Switch Windows
• Ctrl + C -> Copy
• Ctrl + X → Cut
• Ctrl + V -> Paste

When processing word or working with spreadsheets:

• Ctrl + (left arrow key or right arrow key) → move words (word processing) or horizontal cell blocks (spreadsheets) at a time
• Ctrl + (up arrow key or down arrow key) → move paragraphs (word processor) or vertical cell boxes (spreadsheets) at a time
• Ctrl + Shift + (Left arrow key or Right arrow key) → Select words (word processor) or horizontal cell blocks (spreadsheets) at a time
• Ctrl + Shift + (up arrow or down arrow key) → select paragraphs (word processor) or blocks of vertical cells (spreadsheets) at once

Tell us about an interesting, unusual, or challenging process you have at work.

One vital work habit I have is keeping a research notebook. I save one for each year of my project. I jot everything down in my notebook, from semi-reflections on the problems I am solving, to the equations I am working on, to notes on my procedures and reflections on conversations I have with researchers. In fact, it would not be entirely true to say that I write all this right in my notebook, because I often write on whatever scrapbook paper I have at hand and then paste it in. You will also realize that I am pasting my code from my research and typing reflections on my presentations and quarterly work.

Notebook keeping is one of the most important, if not the most important skill I have learned in my research class. First, it helps me catalog my procedures. One really important (and often overlooked) aspect of good science is reproducibility. If you don’t keep track of your routines, then it will be very difficult to reproduce the experiment or repeat it with different variables. Tracking your procedures can also help you spot errors. We are all humans. We are all wrong. If you write down each small procedure, it will be much easier to spot small mistakes before they lead to serious suffering later on.

It is also very important to keep a notebook to track the development of your thoughts over time. It is really helpful to be able to trace an idea back to the exact moment of the eureka, or to the series of thoughts that I led to it. I can show you the exact page I wrote on December 31, 2017, when, sitting in my grandparents’ office late at night during winter break, I drew the first concept of how I would analytically search for missing planets. (This is the idea behind my last two years of research.) It’s a great intellectual tool because it allows me to reflect on my past work and analyze why I was successful, but it’s also a great nostalgic tool. …

How do you keep track of what you need to do?

To-do lists are huge. I maintain a “visual” list of due dates on my Google calendar. I distribute assignments on different calendars by topic or grade. I am a visual person, so each calendar is marked with a color that I associate with a topic or class (for example, my research deadlines are purple, my chemistry assignments are lime green, my English assignments are dark blue, etc.). I also have a sliding to-do list in phone notes with different tasks or tasks with flexible deadlines. I try to keep them in order of priority, and when I take on these tasks, I try to start at the top and gradually work my way down.

When I have really busy weeks, I try to make plans for the whole week of what I’m going to do and when I’m going to do it. I start by defining my daily schedule and then create time blocks around it. Then I look at my google calendar and sliding to-do list and assign specific tasks to specific blocks. Where I keep these master lists depends on how I feel this week and what makes me feel most productive. My favorite places to keep them is a phone note (one per week) with separate schedule lists for each day, or a belt-tied schedule that I draw on a blank sheet of computer paper.

What’s your favorite side project?

This is not a side project, but rather a main project. I am the Founder and President of the Watershed Warriors Initiative , a grant-funded, student-led 501 (c) (3) organization. We write and teach environmental STEM lessons in local elementary schools. We use hands-on lessons and labs to link the Virginia science teaching standards that students learn in class with real-life environmental issues they may find in backyards or local parks. We target elementary schools in our school district with a high proportion of students from low-income families and at-risk groups. Since the founding of the club in 2014, we have trained about 800 fifth-graders. We teach two to four lessons in each grade of elementary school per school year. At the end of the year, in partnership with National Park Service, we send students on a trip to a local wetland where they apply the concepts we taught them through service activities such as wetland restoration and water quality testing.

What are you reading now or what do you recommend?

I recommend Dava Sobel ‘s Glass Universe . It is a Hidden Figures story about Harvard Computers, a group of women including Annie Jump Cannon, Williamina Fleming, and Henrietta Swann-Leavitt, who analyzed stars at the Harvard Observatory in the late 1800s and early 1900s. These women were pioneers in science at a time when most of society believed that academia was not the place for them. Their discoveries and innovations, including the stellar classification system and the relationship between stellar variability and intrinsic luminosity (the relationship that allowed astronomers to determine how far away the stars are), constitute much of the foundation of our knowledge of astronomy and astrophysics.

Can you share the music playlist you’ve created for work or somewhere else?

When I work, I listen to a lot of different music, but most of all I enjoy listening to David Bowie’s album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. I swear the space theme is pure coincidence.