Nick Nelson changed colleges and his career path shortly into his freshman year. He began as a mechanical engineering major but soon transferred to UWM to study physics. Nelson especially enjoyed his courses with Philip Chang, a physics professor who specializes in theoretical astrophysics and cosmology. He worked with Chang for\u202fnearly three\u202fyears on a project\u202fabout\u202fclassical dwarf novae, a type of binary star system.\u202fNelson\u202fcreated a\u202fcomputational simulation,\u202fa computer program that allowed him to\u202fpredict\u202fhow these star systems\u202fwould\u202flikely behave. He\u202fwrote\u202fa paper\u202fabout\u202fthese\u202ffindings, which was accepted for publication\u202fin a peer-reviewed journal and settled a\u202flong-debated\u202fquestion\u202fabout\u202fdwarf novae. Nelson earned his bachelor\u2019s degree in physics in May and begins the doctoral program in astronomy at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville this fall.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19712,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"class_list":["post-6071","class_notes","type-class_notes","status-publish","hentry"],"uwm_unpublish_requested":false,"yoast_head":"\n