Senior Honors Thesis
A senior honors thesis is a year-long capstone experience for Tufts seniors who have met certain qualifications in liberal arts or engineering. The senior honors thesis in the Department of Physics and Astronomy takes the form of an independent research-based project culminating in a scholarly monograph that incorporates extensive research, critical analysis, and a sustained argument centered on a defined research question or hypothesis.
All senior honors theses in the Department of Physics and Astronomy must meet the following criteria:
- Is a year-long project (8 credits upon completion of two consecutive semesters in your final year at Tufts).
- Must be approved in advance by and registered through the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
- Is supervised and approved by a committee of two Tufts professors.
- Your committee chair must be a full-time faculty member in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
- The second committee member must be a Tufts professor and may be from either Physics and Astronomy or a different department.
- A third committee member is possible, but not required. The third committee member may be from Tufts, another institution, or from outside academia.
- Culminates in a defense. The defense is a formal presentation of your thesis, followed by a discussion of it with your committee. All committee members must be present at the defense.
- Will be archived in Tufts Digital Collections & Archives when completed.
For more information, speak with your advisor and visit the Tufts Senior Thesis and Policies and Procedures websites.
Recent Senior Theses
2025
- Sophia Dinn, An Investigation of the Cross-Linking Dynamics in Polyzwitterion/ChCl Blends. Advisor: Peggy Cebe
- Brian Fu, Thermodynamic Modeling of the Evaporation of Ternary Analog Alloys of Inconel 625 and Inconel 718 During Electrostatic Levitation
- Laura Garavito, Unraveling Particle Distribution Functions: A Novel VDF Reconstruction Method
- Leo Liu, Implementation of the Quantum Phase Algorithm with One and Two-qubit Systems, Advisor: Peter Love
- Elizabeth Panner, A Measurement of the Sensitivity of a Kinetic Inductance Phonon Mediated Detector
- Emma Rabinowitz, Temperature Controlled Water Vapor Annealing of Antheraea pernyi Silk Films to Induce Beta Sheet Crystallinity
- Hudson Ramirez, Space Jam: Are Rubble Pile Asteroids Stable?
- Leo Sajkov, Cosmological probes derived from arcminute-scale images and kilo-degree-scale surveys
- Felix Song, Using AI Methods to Unfold Detector Effects from Ratios Observables Obtained from in High Energy Particle Collision Data
- Alex Timoney, Trigger Strategy Development for Alignment of the ATLAS Muon End-Cap
2024
- Claudia Henry, What Counts as a Productive Interaction: the Student vs Learning Assistant Perspective, Advisor: Vesal Dini
- Trisha Musall, Thermal and structural properties of 3D printed silk fibroin
- Andrew Rauscher, A Green Alternative: The Feasibility of Electrospinning PVDF with GVL
- Param Upadhyay, Investigating the Cosmic Dipole: Bulk Flow Analysis of CosmicFlows4 Using MCMC
2023
- Nathan Burwig, An Analysis of Chronometric Cosmology and the CMB, Advisor: Krzysztof Sliwa
- Emmett Hamilton, Modeling Equilibrium Configurations of Lipid Membranes Under Large Deformations, Advisor: Timothy Atherton
- Jared Reese Shapiro, Galactic Dark Matter Density: Addressing the Core-Cusp Problem, Advisor: Mark Hertzberg
- Yongqi Zhang, Evaluating the Fourier Appoximation in Pulsar Timing Array Analysis, Advisor: Ken Olum
2022
- Andi Gray, Probing the Structure of the Universe with Extreme Actic Galactic Nuclei and Cluster Weak-Lensing, Advisor: Anna Sajina
- Brigette Montminy, Cloud Tracking in Jupiter's Polar Regions Using JumoCam and KITAM Data, Advisor: Anna Sajina
- Matthew Farwell, Formation of Neuronal Networks in Directional Surfaces
- Jessie Yang, Constraints on Higg-Inflation Couplings
- Henry Adair, Effect of Mass, Redshift, Environment, and AGN on the Evolutionary Phase of Galaxies, Advisor: Anna Sajina
2021
- Maxwell Kaye, An Analysis of Chronometric Cosmology
- Sadhya Garg, Fabrication and Optical Analysis of Guanine Based Photonic Films
- Paul Lutkus, Generating Images of Neutrino Interactions in Liquid Argon Time Projection Chambers using Neural Networks
- Allison Culbert, Soft Matter Applications in Quantum Information Theory
- Samantha Livermore, Investigating Gamma-Ray Bursts and Their Use as Standard Candles Through the Optical Luminosity-Time Correlation
- Bayley Cornish, Optimization of W+jets sensitivity to NLO electroweak corrections at the LHC
- Lilianna Houston, Comparing the Long Term Mid-IR Variability of Different AGN Types
- Jacob Sunnerberg, Exploring the Dynamic Utility of Atomic Force Microscopy through the study of Neurons and Nanoparticles
- Dalton Glenny, Cumulative Prong Count in Electron-Neutrino Appearance Data as Probe of Neutrino Mass Hierarchy and Dirac Phase
2020
- Kai Kharpertian, A Deep Neural Network Approach to Generating Liquid-Argon Time Projection Chamber Images (Experimental High Energy Physics), Advisor: Hugh Gallagher
- Ilya Yurchenko, Neuronal Dynamics on Patterned Substrates (Biophysics), Advisor: Hugh Gallagher, Remco Chang
- Mark Gonzalez, Investigating the Hubble Tension with an Axion-Photon Coupling (Astrophysics / Cosmology), Advisor: Roger Tobin
- Michael Rosenbaum, Viability of Predictive Methods Applied to Zwitterionic Polymers (Condensed Matter Physics), Advisor: Hugh Gallagher, James Adler