Over 15 years ago, a glow of gamma rays from the center of our Galaxy was discovered and its origin remains a mystery to this day. I am a graduate student at Berkeley studying particle astrophysics working to explain this signal using convolutional neural networks. The excess is a large number of unexplained gamma rays originating from the Galactic center and measured by the Fermi Gamma Ray Telescope. Models of dark matter predict a signal which looks tantalizingly close to the excess observed, however astrophysical origins have not yet been excluded. Using machine learning, we aim to clarify whether the statistics of the signal match dark matter or other astrophysical sources. Before my PhD, as an undergraduate at MIT, I studied fast radio bursts (short bursts of radio waves with astrophysical origins) using the CHIME radio telescope and the cosmic microwave background with the BICEP experiment. Beyond physics, I enjoy exploring the outdoors; lately, I have been especially into climbing, backpacking and trail running.
Eve Schoen
