Mary Murphy
I began my college career in my hometown (Wausau, WI) at UW-Marathon County. I have since transferred to UW-Madison and am a sophomore majoring in Electrical Engineering. Spending quality time with family and friends is my favorite thing to do. When I’m not busy with school I enjoy backpacking, reading, coffee shops, country music, and working on my scrapbook.
I spent this past summer at UW-River Falls exploring the world of astrophysics. My project dealt with benchmarking the performance of a random number photon transport simulation that was implemented to run on a GPU, which finishes this simulation 65 times faster than its CPU counterpart! After comparing the output of each implementation, discrepancies in the data were highlighted to hone the performance of the GPU simulation, which helps us model how Cherenkov radiation moves, and is detected, in the ice.
Next summer, I’m excited to travel to Sweden to continue research with IceCube. While only a sophomore and still getting used to college, I’m also getting more excited about what I’m learning. I’m considering pursuing a Master’s degree in Physics or Electrical Engineering after I finish my undergraduate studies.
Take a look at some of Mary's work.
Summer Research Overview
Project Poster
