The APS Eastern Great Lakes Section (EGLS) Fall 2024 Meeting and SPS Zone Meeting took place at Marietta College in Marietta, Ohio, on October 18th and 19th.

Several students from the OSU Department of Physics were in attendance to present posters and research at the APS meeting, and for the Society of Physics Students (SPS) Zone 7 Meeting also occurring at the college.

Senior undergraduate physics majors Josie Rose and John Scott both presented on their research at the APS meeting.

Physics majors Katherine Indyk, Pushkar Shirahatti, Dylan Wells, and Stella Nelson also presented at the conference.

Scott's presentation, "An Angular Diameter Measurement of β UMa via Stellar Intensity Interferometry with the VERITAS Observatory", was about "...the basics of Stellar Intensity Interferometry including details about our analysis process and the paper we published on Merak in May of this year." (Scott)

Josie Rose won the EGLS Meeting Award for Undergraduate Student Talk at the Fall 2024 meeting of the Eastern Great Lakes Section of the APS. Josie received the highest score amongst the undergraduate students giving talks. Her work was entitled "First indications of a non-round star with stellar intensity interferometry".  She was recognized for the award at the end of the meeting and has already received the $100 prize. She will also be recognized on the EGLS-APS web pages. Congratulations!

Rose's presentation was "... about my new results measuring the shape of rapidly rotating star gamma Cassiopeia (same as topic as my talk at the workshop in France, just for a very different audience and much shorter). This is the first time the shape and position angle of a star and not only its average size has been measured with stellar intensity interferometry." (Rose)

Undergrads Alex Torres, Leland Barnes, and Nicholas Bagby all represented our SPS Cohort at the zone meeting.

Nicholas shared that "I personally appreciated the APS regional meeting because it let me see some of the research that my fellow undergraduates were doing." and "The SPS zone meeting was also a cool opportunity to talk with SPS members from different schools. The meeting featured fun activities including a planetarium show, a rooftop star party (one attached picture shows the historic refracting telescope housed in the Gurley Observatory dome), and a trivia competition that Nick, Trey, and I won along with two SPS students not from OSU (this is also an attached picture). Furthermore, interacting with the SPS zone leaders helped the OSU board gain insight on how we can become involved with the national organization and leverage their resources."

Thank you to all our talented undergraduate students for representing the OSU Department of Physics at these events!