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Orientation Video Transcript

Participant: Mark Croce, 2006 DHS Scholar, University of California-Santa Barbara, Physics

Transcript:

Croce: There’s a big problem with radiation detection—detecting contraband materials, cargo monitoring, things like that. And the big issue is, we can have it high resolution and get a lot of data and recognize exactly what the material is or you can have it cheap.

Question:What is the goal of your project?

Croce:  Our goal of the project here is to develop composite scintillator materials which sort of combine the high performance of the expensive technologies with a lot of the advantages of cost-effective ones.  You know, the vision ultimately is lots of information, all the time, readily accessible and have complete, ubiquitous monitoring of courts, transportation networks, things like that.

Question:Do you plan to continue this research in the future, and if not, what other topics are of interest to you?

Croce:  I’ve been in this program for several years now. I started as an ISEF Scholar as a high school student and applied for the Scholarship program and had my internship here at Los Alamos, and it’s just a great experience all around, a good team. And so I’ll be continuing this project, actually, even during the school year. I’ll be writing a paper on the data I’ve taken and continuing my data analysis. I’m actually planning on doing my senior thesis on this work, and next summer I’ll be back continuing.

Question:How has the DHS scholarship influenced your education and professional development?

Croce:  The big thing is opportunities. You know, as a high school student being able to have such incredible opportunities to have my pick of the most incredible technologies and places to work. Everything’s worked out just great. I get to do the most exciting technologies and help solve some of the world’s biggest problems. It’s been really rewarding, and they’ve been very supportive in giving me all kinds of great opportunities.