Giannina Guzman

I was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I obtained my B.S. in Astrophysics and Planetary Sciences with minors in Physics and Communications on May 2019 from Villanova Univsersity. I worked at GSFC Summer of 2018 as part at the Undegraduate Research Associate in Astrobiology program and I am currently back at GSFC for a year as a post-bac. 

Skills

• Native Spanish speaker/writer.
• Comfortable with: UNIX, C, Git commands, Python, some IRAF, Microsoft Office suite, and Django-specific database/web development. Some C++
• Diligent, hardworking, outgoing, and enthusiastic researcher with no trouble presenting in front of crowds due to my extensive background in performing arts, communications, and public relations.
• I’ve also pursued dancing and acting as hobbies for most of my life + I’m extremely good at Disney music trivia, but all of that is just a bonus.

Teacher's Assistant at Villanova University

Assisted professors in grading, and in-class help to the students. Deals with grading matters personally. Had to come up with effective and consistent grading system unless specified otherwise by the professor. Had to present leadership and confidence in order to answer any questions asked by students.

Jason A. Cardelli Memorial Award for Undergraduate Research (Spring 2019)
• “The Jason A. Cardelli Memorial Award for Undergraduate Research is presented to a graduating Astronomy & Astrophysics major whose body of undergraduate research work exhibits particularly high standards of independence, originality, and quality.” (Villanova University Website) A prestigious award given by the department to deserving graduating seniors.

First place in Villanova's 2018 Sigma Xi CRF Poster Symposium (Spring 2018)
• Best poster award in the category of: Undergraduate, for the Astronomy & Astrophysics, Physics, Computing Sciences, Mathematics & Statistics category by the Sigma Xi Villanova chapter. Poster Title: The Red Thumbs: A Study in Plant Growth on Martian Regolith Simulant​

Digitizing Villanova University’s Eclipsing Binary Card Catalog
• (Summer 2017) In this project, I worked on building a database, a data-entry user interface, and a catalog website interface for Villanova University’s eclipsing binary card catalog. This card catalog is an almost century-old card catalog that contains annotations on eclipsing binaries by various scientists throughout the years. The catalog contains over 2,000 cards, which will have to be added to the database manually. Therefore, the project has been left as a legacy project, but the database, data-entry interface, and website backbone are already coded and in use. The ‘skeleton’ of the code for this project can be seen on my GitHub account. This project was presented at the 231st AAS meeting in D.C. and was done under the mentorship of Dr. Andrej Prsa.

The Red Thumbs: A Study in Plant Growth on Martian Regolith Simulant
• (Spring 2018) This project was done under the mentorship of Dr. Edward Guinan. It was a qualitative study, with a few quantitative measurements, on the growth of various plants in Martian regolith simulant. I tested the plants with fertilizer, acidifiers (due to Mars regolith’s basic nature), vermiculite, and organic soil builder. I controlled for water, while the plants were subject to changes in both temperature and light that were mapped and related back to certain health issues with the plants. The project was featured on various news outlets like WHYY-FM radio and I was interviewed a few times about the project. This project’s poster won the best poster in Sigma Xi’s symposium competition and was presented as an educational project at the 233rd AAS meeting in Seattle. It has already pioneered various schools to follow suit in order to get kids involved in the excitement of STEM research.

Designing a Python Module for the Calculation of Molecular Parameters and Production Rates in Comets
• (Summer 2018) I worked at NASA GSFC as part of the Astrobiology Institute’s URAA summer program led by Dr. Michael Mumma. I worked with Dr. Miguel de Val Borro on an astroquery package called jplspec (which is already available with the newest version of astroquery) that allows the query of JPL’s molecular spectral catalog in order to obtain molecular constants needed for the analysis and calculation of production rates in comets. I also worked on implementing two models (LTE, with and without photodissociation) for the calculation of production rates in comets as functionalities on the sbpy spectroscopy package. ‘sbpy’ is a NASA funded python package in development that contains tools and data analysis specific to small body (asteroids and comets) science. The open source code and my work can be found on GitHub. This project was presented at the 233rd AAS meeting in Seattle. The results of the project were also presented in an institute-wide final presentation at the end of the summer. I was funded and kept as part of the sbpy development team for a year after this project by the PI, and I am an author for the newest astroquery version’s paper, as well as an author in the sbpy JOSS publication.

FUSE and IUE Spectroscopy of the Prototype Dwarf Nova ER Ursa Majoris During Quiescence
• (Fall 2018) I used de-reddened FUSE and IUE spectra along with Gaia parallax to revisit and extract new information about the dwarf nova ER Ursae Majoris and its current evolutionary stage. ER Ursae Majoris is the prototype star for a subset of SU UMa-type dwarf novae characterized by short cycle times between outbursts, high outburst frequency, and negative superhumps. We fit both the FUSE and IUE data with accretion disk and photosphere models to find optimal inclination angles, white dwarf mass, and accretion rates. The accretion rates were well within what was expected of a dwarf nova from the disk instability model. My mentor for this project was Dr. Edward Sion, and the paper for which I am first author, is published on the Astronomical Journal.

There are other things outside of my academic skills that I believe set me apart from others. I took time to obtain a Communications minor because I believe the skills one learns from courses in this field are crucial to a scientist that is interested in doing outreach in the future. I have already actively participated in outreach, volunteering every Friday for a year in the Villanova club called All Hands-on Science. This club is dedicated to attending after-school boys and girls clubs in underrepresented communities around Philadelphia to perform hands-on experiments with kids ranging from 5th to 10th grade. The focus of the volunteer work is to bring excitement for the sciences to underprivileged communities, and to provide advice and direction in order to show that the sciences is not an unachievable career path for them. This opportunity solidified my intent to do outreach throughout my career. I also held leadership positions in two different clubs. I was the Villanova Astronomical Society (VAS) treasurer for a year. VAS is a campus club dedicated to providing opportunities, trips, and a community to students interested in amateur astronomy. For two years, I also acted as Public Relations Chair of The Superlative, an all-styles dance team at Villanova that prides itself on its true diversity of culture and dance forms to create a blend of styles that is unique in the campus. In this dance team, not only did I function as an officer, but I also was an active choreographer and dancer the three years I was part of the team. I believe these leadership and volunteering experiences have endowed me with a unique set of abilities.