If I could ignore the intense humidity clinging to me as I pedaled for my life uphill to work, I could almost pretend I was back in California, with the sun beaming down my face and the Weather app boasting a snappy 80+ degree Fahrenheit week. But nope! I was actually on my daily bike ride to work at the State University of New York, Stony Brook (better known as Stony Brook University), where I’m SURFing in their School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) this summer.

SURF stands for “Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship,” a 10-week paid program where undergraduate students (not just from Caltech!) get the opportunity to work with a Caltech professor, a JPL scientist, or (if you’re a Caltech student) a professor from another university and conduct research under their guidance and mentorship. In my case, I am SURFing under a professor at Stony Brook who is also a Caltech alum from ‘83: Professor Edmund Kar Man Chang. This summer, my research consists of me trying methods of analysis to correlate storm tracks with precipitation across the United States, especially machine learning methods. Every week, I meet with my mentor and another research scientist under him, Dr. Cheng Zheng (who works with me directly, and I consider him another one of my mentors) to update them on my work, and I write reports every few week detailing my project, methodologies, roadblocks, and future plans throughout the course of the 10 weeks.

I usually work in one of two computer labs in Endeavour Hall, one of the three buildings in the SoMAS complex. It has a stunning fish tank filled right at the entrance, and it was the first thing I noticed when I entered the building on my first day.

SoMAS itself is tucked in the southern corner of the suburban, sprawling campus of Stony Brook University. In order to reach it from the Stony Brook LIRR (Long Island Railroad) station, it takes around 15 minutes by bike. This means I get to see creatures like geese, squirrels, and even deer on my work to and from work!

As for my day-to-day life, it’s very quaint and actually quite relaxing compared to the hustle and bustle of classes and coursework at Caltech (even when I was behind on sending some work over to my mentors, who are thankfully very understanding about it all). Research is all about trying things out, hypothesizing, repeating experiments to ensure that your findings aren’t a fluke, and being able to answer questions about, defend, and adapt your work to an audience. As a non-wet-lab student researcher, I’m not cooking chemicals in the fume hood or dissecting any fish; my computer is my best friend this summer as I remotely log into the lab server and code up my models, run my programs, and send my mentors my results. I also make weekly presentations (just like a graduate researcher would!) and learn tools and strategies for making effective slides to communicate my findings and ideas. (You would never realize how literally 6 slides can spark 30 minutes of discussion and elaboration…)

And when the day’s over, I hop on my borrowed bike and pedal back to the LIRR station in order to take the train back to Port Jefferson, where I’m calling “home” this SURF. Thankfully, it’s a downhill ride this time, and as I weave through the sidewalks and feel the pull of gravity throttling me down to the station, the wind through my hair takes away some of the sticky humidity and faintly reminds me of the Caltech I left behind. I’ll be returning to it soon enough, with new findings from my work, content for a final presentation, and the memories of a lifetime.

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Oh, and I also got to see New York City. Duh. Have some photos of Port Jefferson (first) and NYC (second and third) below! Yes, I somehow snagged center second row seats to a Broadway staging of Hadestown!!!