The Science in Action Seminar Series met on November 7, 2018 at 4:30 pm. Our guest speaker was Ryan Lineham, Ph.D. a Candidate in Physics at Stanford University. Lineham does his research at the Stanford Linear Accelerator, and is in an international team of over 200 people.
20 Skyline College Students, as well as his mother, from all disciplines listened to Lineham talk about his career in science as well as what he does his research on. Lineham did credit his mom with getting him to like physics.
Justin Lee, a biotechnology manufacturing student, said he was blown away by the talk and felt he was too shy to ask questions. The Science in Action Seminar Series is meant to be a venue where students can learn about what their next steps in education would look like as well as to talk to some very smart people about their research. No questions are out of bounds.
The Skyline College students kept Lineham for over a half hour after the talk, asking him questions about how to get into graduate school, how to pick a research lab and many others. Lineham’s main topic for the day was “to get a richer understanding of the invisible.” These include cosmic rays, muons and other particles.
Specifically, Lineham is looking for dark matter. When asked why study these particles, Lineham stated that he wanted to increase our knowledge of the universe and that when electrons were discovered they had no use, and now we would not go anyplace without our devices that use electrons.
Article and Photo by Nick Kapp