Abigail Flom

Abigail Flom is a student at the Florida Institute of Technology studying Planetary Science. She began college the fall of 2015, but has enough credits relevant to her major to have achieved senior standing and will graduate in the spring of 2018. She has worked hard in her classes, obtaining a 3.92 GPA and making it onto the Deans list every semester. She is halfway through the typical junior level curriculum, having taken courses through differential equations, thermodynamics, and physical mechanics. Abbey has participated in research since her freshman year, starting with her position as an undergraduate research assistant to Dr. Csaba Palotai, simulating the Jovian atmosphere. She has also contributed to research through her In Situ Resource Utilization class, where her group worked on developing a process for creating a more chemically accurate Martian regolith simulant. Her group is continuing this research into the spring semester and hopes to publish the results upon completion of the project. She is also involved in a more self-directed project on the classification of asteroids based off of their spectra that began in her remote sensing class, and will also be continued into next semester. Outside of academics and research, she is interested in improving her department and student life through serving on the undergraduate student advisory committee. This committee is a group of nominated individuals from each department that meet with the head of the college of sciences to discuss and suggest improvements to current policies and ensure top educational quality. She also has volunteered her time to help out with the observation night for the introductory level astronomy course. Away from school, she pursues a number of hobbies including scuba diving, for which she has gone on two trips to the Bahamas and Grand Cayman, playing music on the flute and piano, and reading.