The University of Toledo boasts research opportunities for undergraduate students as early as their first semester on campus — a key attraction for Lauren Jin, who just completed her sophomore year as a Rocket studying physics and mathematics.
But why wait even that long?
Lauren Jin recently completed her sophomore year studying physics and mathematics at UToledo.
The summer after high school, before she was navigating her first semester at UToledo, Jin, of Toledo, was collaborating with researchers at the prestigious Samsung Medical Center in South Korea. Their work exploring Type 1 diabetes would lead to her first publication credit in the peer-reviewed journal Biochemistry and Biophysics Reports.
The experience became the foundation of a strong engagement in undergraduate research for Jin, who began exploring opportunities with faculty mentors as soon as she settled in at UToledo. She now works closely with researchers at Michigan State University’s Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, with whom she connected through a National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program last summer.
She’s since presented her work at MSU’s Mid-Michigan Symposium for Undergraduate Research Experiences in July, the Fall Meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Nuclear Physics in Boston in October, and the Smart Reduction and Emulation Applying Machine Learning in Nuclear Environments (STREAMLINE) Collaboration Symposium at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois in April.
And she’s looking forward to a summer collaboration with scientists from institutions overseas and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
“Lauren is one of the most personable students I’ve had the privilege of teaching, and she’s also one of the most intelligent, ambitious and hard-working students I’ve ever had,” said Dr. Kathy Shan, a Distinguished University Lecturer in physics at UToledo. “I don’t think she has ‘you can’t’ in her vocabulary, because if she’s interested in doing something, she’ll find a way to do it. I have no doubt that she’ll be successful in whatever she ends up deciding to do because she’s stubborn and smart and determined in a way that I’ve rarely seen in my years of teaching.”
Jin came to UToledo as an accomplished pianist, but she didn’t see herself pursuing music as a career.
“I was kind of looking for something that held the same creative intuition that I had really enjoyed from music,” Jin said. “I thought I would probably be well suited for the natural sciences or mathematics.”
In landing on physics and mathematics, she continued a family tradition: Her grandfather is a theoretical nuclear physicist, and her father earned a doctorate in physics as well before becoming a medical doctor.
Jin is eyeing a career in theoretical physics.
Proximity and research opportunities attracted Jin to UToledo, which recently received R1 status, placing it among the country’s top-tier research universities by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. She considered the input of faculty mentors, including Dr. Rick Irving, in ultimately prioritizing coursework in her first year on campus while applying for the summer research opportunity in Michigan.
“Professors were always forthcoming to offer me advice even when I wasn’t working with them directly,” she said. “That really helped me figure out what I wanted to do in my career and the research that I wanted to do going forward.”
Michigan State University’s Facility for Rare Isotope Beams proved a good fit for Jin, who spent last summer using machine learning frameworks to emulate observables derived from quasiparticle random phase approximation (QRPA) calculations. QRPA is a theoretical framework essential for describing nuclear excitations and response functions.
The collaborative work aimed to reduce the high computational cost of QRPA, enabling more comprehensive descriptions of nuclei and more complete uncertainty quantification. It contributes to lab’s long-term efforts to improve predictive power and expand our understanding of nuclear properties across the chart of nuclides.
Jin has remained active in the lab in the semesters since her summer program, scheduling weekly trips to East Lansing amid her courses and campus involvement within the College of Natural Science and Mathematics.
“I started the summer off not knowing anything about nuclear physics,” she said. “I’m proud of myself for not being afraid to ask questions or ask for help and for just diving right in.”
