[This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.] Macrocosm: When and why did you start at COSMOS? Could you tell us a little bit about why you picked UCSC as your campus? Katrina Ricca: I started with COSMOS in the very beginning of June 2019. I was looking for a job that had a closer tie to what was happening in my localized community, Santa Cruz. I used to run summer programs in Silicon Valley; it was wonderful, but it wasn't localized. So, I found COSMOS. I've always been a fan of working at educational programs that focus on education outside of the typical classroom environment. COSMOS has some of that typical classroom environment, but the students who are applying want to be at the program. Plus, COSMOS has the whole residential component. I think that's a huge piece to social-emotional growth and something that I value most about working with students outside of that traditional classroom. And at the end of the day, COSMOS has four beautiful locations, but Santa Cruz is definitely the best.
M: What brings you back to COSMOS every summer? KR: A big part of it is all the students. I especially like days like this where I get to talk to a couple of you. For example, earlier today, I was in a yearbook meeting, and it was a small group of 20 students. All the students’ excitement, spirit, and thirst for knowledge is really inspiring.
M: What do you find most challenging about working at COSMOS? KR: This has been a challenging year. We’ve been trying to reimagine the experience for you all. We want to give you quality education and experience. But, we’re also still trying to figure out how to create social interaction.
M: What do you think the greatest parts about working at COSMOS are? KR: I enjoy working with a team of undergraduate students to bring the program to life. This year, I got to work with Fariha and Sean; they are both wonderful. They have lots of ideas and energy. I also like planning. You spend 10 months of the year planning. Then, you get to run it and put things into action. We get these little snippets of feedback from students which are the best part of the entire experience. We get to hear that something that we did was good, positive, helpful, and encouraging.
M: We know you work as the Assistant Director of COSMOS and manage events. For example, the recent pizza night, raffling prizes, and directing activities. What other things do you do as Assistant Director? KR: You can think of COSMOS as a small business. There's a lot of different things that happened behind the scenes. Some of that is logistical planning, working with our budget, and running reports. We even design the database that students apply on. I do a lot of those behind-the-scenes things to keep everything running. Also, we say the teacher fellows are the bridge between the academic component and the community component of the program. I feel sometimes that I’m the bridge support. I’m not the bridge, but I’m supporting the connection between both sides.
M: What is a funny memory that you have from your time with COSMOS? KR: So far, the pizza night was a fun memory! I had to plan that months in advance and I enjoyed it so much more than I thought I would. I’ve also enjoyed watching Macrocosm TV. The videos are very entertaining. Particularly, in Week One, someone was running and said something like: “I’m only running to make you think I’m healthy.” I got a laugh out of that one.
M: If you were not working at COSMOS, what do you think you would be doing? KR: I have this dream to own a bed-and-breakfast. Maybe a motel or a couple of buildings. Everybody would come together for a meal, and we would talk a little bit.
M: What is an interesting fact about you? KR: I’m a fidgeter. So at my desk, I have a lot of fidgety things, like a fidget cube. Plus, of course, that COSMOS cow that doubles as a stress ball and a slingshot. We also have the COSMOS fidget spinner and the COSMOS USB fan. Also, I have three different colors of Silly Putty. Oftentimes, below the camera, I’m just stretching Silly Putty.
M: If you were a dessert, what dessert would you be? KR: I would be ice cream. Specifically, peanut-butter-chip ice cream. There is this place in Cincinnati, Ohio (where I went to college), and it just has incredible creamy, rich ice cream. They have the perfect ratio of peanut butter to chocolate chips.
M: How really does the lottery for COSMOS merch work? Do you have a higher chance of winning if you ask a “better” question? KR: It’s a random picker: randomresult.com. I put everyone's names in there and it draws it for me. Don’t worry, it’s not rigged. - Sharis Hsu, Cathleen Chow
Discovery Lecture: Mars EDL
Mars. The mysterious, glistening, red orb in the night sky that has been the subject of human fascination since the early days of civilization. With its distinct iron oxide surface, towering volcanoes, immense canyons, and fierce dust storms, it is no surprise that the Red Planet has caught the attention of countless Earth-dwellers that gaze upon the stars, ranging from astronomers to engineers, sci-fi authors to everyday science fanatics, including Galileo, Andy Weir (author of The Martian), and UCSC Prof. Abhishek Halder.
This Monday, Professor Halder, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics at UCSC and Instructor of Cluster 11, presented the process of landing spacecraft on Mars and the uncertainties that come with this process during his Discovery Lecture.
Prof. Halder started his talk by clarifying why Mars has been a topic of interest and exploration in recent years. He credited its terrestrial geography, day/year length, and cool climate as being comparable to Earth’s. The same cannot be said about our other neighbors in the Solar System, all of which are either intolerably hot, intolerably cold, or lack a physical surface to land on. For this reason, Mars holds a promising future for spacecraft and manned space exploration. However, Prof. Halder made sure to point out that visiting our solar system’s other “Goldilocks” planet does not come without its challenges: its atmosphere is less than 1% the thickness of Earth’s and is composed of almost exclusively carbon dioxide with only small traces of nitrogen, oxygen, and other elements that are essential for life on Earth , and is susceptible to frequent “dust storms” — some of which encompass the entire planet — that reduce visibility and have potential to incite widespread damage. (Newsflash: if you are planning a trip to Mars anytime soon, don’t forget your space suit with plenty of oxygen and water! An insulated blanket won’t hurt either.)
Prof. Halder went on to describe the Mars Entry-Descent-Landing Process (EDL): the 7-minute process by which spacecraft arrive on the surface of Mars. In the entry stage, the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere at hypersonic speed (6-10x speed of sound) and undergoes “guided entry,” in which the spacecraft burns fuel to slow its descent. Burning fuel is necessary considering the thin Martian atmosphere hardly contributes to slowing the vessel. The next stage in EDL is descent. In order to slow the spacecraft even further, engineers have invented a “supersonic parachute” that rapidly deploys and slows the spacecraft down enough for the heat shield and backshell to safely separate. Once the spacecraft has slowed down enough to safely land, a crane descends from the spacecraft for the rover to touchdown. Then, the remainder of the spacecraft flies away, and the rover has made it to Mars.
However, this process is not nearly as simple as it sounds. Prof. Halder proceeded to point out the numerous uncertainties that pose a threat to the EDL process. In the entry stage, for example, there is a significant risk of overheating. Should the spacecraft be oriented ever so slightly in the wrong direction while piercing through the atmosphere, the vessel may reach temperatures hotter than it can handle and melt as a result, which interferes with the descent and landing process. Additionally, Prof. Halder pointed out the significance of addressing the various uncertainties: due to the large distance between Mars and Earth (234 million miles on average) and the constraints of radio signal travel time, it takes over 14 minutes on average for a message to be received by Earth. Keep in mind, the entire EDL process only lasts about 7 minutes start to finish. This means that in the case of an emergency, engineers and scientists back on Earth would be unable to manually override the spacecraft during EDL — meaning the spacecraft must rely solely on onboard autonomy. This large responsibility and associated risk earned the EDL process the nickname, “7 minutes of terror.”
However, it is not enough to acknowledge the uncertainties and risks of space landing; they must be dealt with if we wish to successfully explore Mars and other celestial bodies in the future. Next, Prof. Halder discussed the current research and technology that deals with predicting and controlling uncertainty. He went over various models used for controlling uncertainty, such as a probability density function that estimates the probability of a spacecraft landing in a specified location, as well as a nonlinear dynamic Monte Carlo simulation and a Gaussian Uncertainty ellipse. Lastly, Prof. Halder previewed his own research, which predicts uncertainty using a new nonparametric method that enables engineers to calculate uncertainties in real time and uses particles and various color values to represent potential location of spacecraft.
Prof. Halder’s unique perspective of the grueling process of safely landing spacecraft on the surface of Mars has given us all a new appreciation for the beautiful red planet and the amount of effort that goes into studying and exploring it. It is certain that we students will continue to crane our necks at uncomfortable angles to gaze upon the stars. Humanity will continue to be inspired by Prof. Halder and the countless other scientists, engineers, mathematicians, geologists, and astronomers who work to make space exploration a reality. - Astra Tulac
Discovery Lecture: COVID 19 Blood
It’s been over a year since we’ve all been stuck at home because of COVID-19. And it feels so long because a whole 16 months is, quite frankly, a long time.
COVID-19 has infected around 32.4 million people and resulted in approximately 610,000 deaths in America. But as COSMOS’s director Prof. Shaowei Chen insightfully puts it, “No problem, no job,” and COVID-19 is one such problem that countless scientists are out to alleviate. During the Wednesday Discovery Lecture, Dr. Rebecca Dubois, Associate Professor in the Biomolecular Engineering Department at UCSC, gave a very timely talk about evaluating antibody responses to COVID-19 infection and vaccination through blood memory.
Dr. Dubois started by giving us an overview of how antibodies are produced in our bodies and how vaccines operate. Antibodies are blood proteins that are produced when an antigen, a toxin or a foreign substance, enters the body and induces an immune response. White blood cells called B-cells make antibodies, and when the B-cells produce an antibody that has a perfect fit with something foreign, the immune system is triggered to make more of those same antibodies. Antibodies then stick like glue onto the virus and prevent future infection.
Dr. Dubois then explained how the current COVID-19 vaccine works. The COVID-19 virus has many genes and a spike protein on the surface. An mRNA vaccine is produced by wrapping mRNA-encoded spike genes in nanoparticles that are then injected into the blood. Once the vaccine is in the bloodstream, little particles of nanoparticles fuse with our cells, and it directs the cells to begin making spike proteins. Spike proteins are displayed on the surface of our cells, and they instruct the white blood cells to recognize them and start making antibodies. And as of July 23, over 56.7% of the population in America has received their first dose, and 49.1% are fully vaccinated. In California, 63.8% have gotten their first dose, and 52.1% have gotten both doses.
But how do we know if the vaccines are working? According to Dr. Dubois, serological tests, tests that look for antibodies in the blood, need to be performed to confirm if the body is properly producing antibodies.
Dr. Dubois details two antibody tests that researchers use to detect antibodies. The first is called the Lateral Flow Immunoassay (LFI). You prick your finger, and the LFI analyzes your blood. It’s rapid, but the data is only qualitative, giving only a yes or no answer, and doesn’t provide the level of antibodies in the blood. The second instrument is the Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA). While the ELISA provides semi-quantitative data, it takes hours to finish its evaluation. As a result, Dr. Dubois and her team are aiming to develop a way to evaluate the levels of antibodies in a person's bloodstream that is both rapid and semiquantitative.
She then introduces the Biolayer Interferometry (BLI), a device that utilizes a fiber optic biosensor. When a spike protein is dipped into plasma, a golden liquid from the blood that contains antibodies, it will change the wavelength of the light. The shift of the wavelength can determine the levels of antibodies in someone’s blood. Only when there are COVID-19 antibodies in the blood will there be a change in the signal, and this signal depends on the number of antibodies in the blood. And this process only takes 18 minutes!
As of now, Dr. Dubois has published her findings and is now waiting for the FDA’s approval to use the device in a clinical setting.
But the implications of the BLI expand further than just COVID-19. Dr. Dubois said that it could be used for evaluating antibodies for other viruses and vaccine development. It can test if vaccines work for immune-compromised people and explore immunity to other COVID-19 variants.
And finally, Dr. Dubois gave us some parting words of wisdom on how to immerse ourselves into STEM. She said to get yourself into a lab by taking opportunities that you can find and get involved. There are a lot of ways to help outside of research. And remember, you don’t have to be an expert before you start learning. And who knows? Maybe some of us will one day also make discoveries in the world of antibodies! - Wendy Li