Jeisson Pulido Calderon, a junior physics major, hopes to use this internship experience to work for NASA or SpaceX. Photo courtesy of Calderon
By Chaz Kawamura, Staff Reporter
It was a bright Monday morning for junior physics major Jeisson Pulido Calderon. He was working on his homework until he suddenly received an email. Not just any kind of email, an email of acceptance. But not just any acceptance email, it was his ticket into a prestigious solar physics summer internship program. As he looked at it, he was blinded with pure joy.
Calderon was accepted into the remote Harvard-Smithsonian Solar Physics Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program, a collaboration between Harvard and NASA that provides students in-depth access and opportunities to truly feel what it is like to work in the field of space exploration and analysis. More precisely, Calderon will participate in cutting-edge research on the sun.
The first person he told was his mother, who has been there for him from the beginning. Not just the beginning of his life, but through the multiple hardships he had faced personally and scholastically.
“She was the one to see me cry and feel down for the hardships I have faced in my life,” Calderon said. “She was shocked and she felt very blessed to see her son finally getting accepted somewhere, and more for this important internship.”
With only six applicants accepted into the program, Calderon said he is honored to be one of the few people who get to work with state-of-the-art technology and industry professionals. With this experience, his dream of working with a top space company such as NASA or SpaceX and explore space within the field is one step closer.
Calderon was looking for a summer internship when his physics professor Dr. Ximena Cid emailed her students informing them of research opportunities including the Harvard-Smithsonian REU program.
In the beginning, he thought that there was no possible way he was going to be accepted. Quite simply, he didn’t think he was good enough. But he was inspired by his family to keep pushing forward.
“There’s a lot of people who have inspired me, like my mom who has put everything to improve our lives, as well as my brother who had to go through many challenges throughout his life,” Calderon said. “I was ultimately thinking about my family, which made me take a step forward into succeeding and doing it for all of them.”
With the decision made, Calderon started working on a three-page essay outlining experience he had in the field of physics, which was mostly school-related projects, as well as any personal challenges that he had faced while pursuing his education.
Then he pressed send and even though he didn’t think he had a shot, he waited. Around a month later, he was accepted for the internship program, joining five others with the opportunity to participate in technologically advanced research on the sun, solar winds, and the heliosphere.
He will work alongside other students, studying the reconstruction of the magnetic flux ropes using the Grad Shafranov Method. The project will include recreating solar winds and their magnetic flux using the program languages Matlab or Python.
Those are heady terms that only an aspiring physicist could love, but for Calderon they are the next logical progression for what began as a deep and abiding fascination with space that has captivated him since he was around 10 years old in his country of Columbia.
“All I wanted to do was go in the mountains in Columbia and the tallest places and just look at the stars,” he said. “I tried to understand why the stars were there. I knew about physics as in like astronomy and space, but I did not know that it was called physics until I came to the United States.”
Along with his keen interest in space and interest in studying physics, Calderon says he was driven to apply because of the challenges and obstacles he faced as an immigrant coming from Columbia to the U.S, such as financial difficulties and not being able to speak English.
“Coming to the U.S. from Columbia was a challenge,” he said. “I never spoke English at first. I had to learn. But my teachers saw potential in me.”
Calderon wants to use this opportunity not only for experience but to inspire others like his fraternity brothers in Omega Delta Phi Inc, and minorities like the Latinx community.
“I would like to inspire the Latino community, to inspire organizations, like Omega Delta Phi Inc and the brotherhood to go out and apply for internships,” Calderon said. “I would like to inspire any minority who is underrepresented (to go)into STEM… and let them know that it is possible for them even though they are a minority.”
Calderon says being accepted proved to him that by taking the risk to fail, endless possibilities can open. That is the message that he wants to spread to others.
“What I would say is to take a chance to see what happens,” he said. “For chances that you do not take, you will never know how close you were to getting that chance.”
