Nick Nelson began college as a mechanical engineering major. But just weeks into his freshman year, he realized he was much more interested in physics, a major that his engineering-focused school didn’t offer. He began researching other universities, and UW-Milwaukee immediately caught his eye.
“I saw that UWM has a fantastic physics program, and I knew I liked the campus and the area around it,” Nelson said. He also was reassured by the wide range of majors at UWM. “I knew that if for whatever reason physics didn’t work out, I’d be able to find something eventually that clicked for me.”
Physics did in fact click for him. Nelson especially enjoyed his courses with Philip Chang, a physics professor who specializes in theoretical astrophysics and cosmology. Intrigued by the possibilities of undergraduate research, Nelson asked Chang if he could work with him on a research project. The professor asked him to come back in a year or two, explaining that he typically supervises students who are more advanced in their coursework, an advantage for theoretical and computational research.
A few months later, Nelson attended a meeting for physics majors and faculty, where Chang mentioned students’ future careers. “He told us that to be successful in physics and astronomy, one of the main things you need is persistence,” Nelson recounted. “Right after that meeting, I went up to him and said, ‘You said we need to be persistent. Are you sure I can’t research with you?’”
Chang agreed, working with Nelson for nearly three years on a project about classical dwarf novae, a type of binary star system. Nelson created a computational simulation, a computer program that allowed him to predict how these star systems would likely behave. He wrote a paper about these findings, which was accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal and settled a long-debated question about dwarf novae.
Back in high school Nelson thought that as someone interested in STEM fields, he’d be limited to engineering. But UWM opened him to new possibilities.
“I realized (astrophysics) is something that I enjoy doing, and that I could make a career out of it,” he said. Nelson earned his bachelor’s degree in physics in May and begins the doctoral program in astronomy at the University of Virgina in Charlottesville this fall.
