Beshoi Saad Email and Phone Number

Major: Professional PhysicsMinors: Mathematics, PhilosophyGPA: 3.8/4.0

In the summer of 2013, I participated in an REU program entitled Heliophysics Summer Research Opportunity for Undergraduates. I had the privilege of working with Dr. Vladimir Florinski, whose research deals with galactic cosmic ray transport. This was a great experience and allowed me to witness firsthand how researchers create models, test their models, reproduce other researchers’ results, and how they interact with the other scientists. In my particular case, Dr. Florinski was trying to disprove certain models of heliophysicists in both Germany and South Africa. Galactic cosmic rays are transported into our heliosphere, but many of the lower energy ones are modulated, or attenuated, at a certain boundary. The purpose of this research project was to determine the modulation boundary. With Dr. Florinski’s supervision, we computed the heliospheric environment using a global magnetohydrodynamic simulation which provided us with a plasma background where we conducted a galactic cosmic ray transport simulation. Our results were very exciting as they showed the other scientists’ theories to be flawed, while Dr. Florinski’s theory prevailed. This was a very rewarding experience and gave me the opportunity to present our results via a poster presentation at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco, CA in December of 2013. Although this research was not related directly to medical physics, I gained invaluable experience and many indispensable skills from it, which will help me along my path to becoming a medical physicist.