As part of my Fulbright Research Award, I was required to write a proposal explaining the work I will be doing in Italy. I wrote about developing a website for physicists around the world to access, and I also mentioned modeling projects related to cosmic rays. Proposals do not always play out in the way scientists want them to, but I am happy to say that both projects are the focus of my current work.
My website is an extension of a thesis project created by a graduate student I am currently working with. The website contains data on the sun, such as the number of sunspots and the strength of its magnetic field. This is important because we want to centralize data in one place. The data are pulled from multiple websites, so it is difficult for particle physicists and heliophysicists to keep track and interpret data from so many places. My website stores solar data, streamlining the process. We also want to increase data accessibility: storing data on one website helps everybody access them, reducing barriers to data that might be behind a scientific collaboration or paywall. This project is more specific to computer science than physics, but I have been coding in python, JavaScript, HTML and CSS.
