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U.S. Fulbright

Detecting Gravitational Waves at Home and Abroad

April 26, 2016
Dan Hoak

Daniel Hoak, 2015-2016, Italy

Two months ago, physicists around the world were set ‘chirping’ with the announcement that gravitational waves had been detected for the first time. The detection is the culmination of decades of work, and it represents the beginning of a new era in astronomy.

I’ve been a member of the team that made the detection since 2005, when I joined the staff of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in Livingston, Louisiana. Later, I went to grad school at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where I earned my Ph.D. last fall. My doctoral research focused on data analysis with gravitational wave detectors, and I assisted with upgrades to the LIGO facility in Hanford, Washington that made the detection possible.

For my Fulbright research, I’m helping to upgrade the Virgo detector, an experiment located outside of Pisa, Italy. Using a third detector to listen for gravitational waves will improve the science tremendously: we’ll be able to detect weaker signals, across more of the sky, and work out their position and properties with greater accuracy.

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U.S. Fulbright

A Bit of My Culture for a Bit of Yours

June 4, 2015
Derrell Acon

Derrell Acon, 2013-2014, Italy, performing “Da Dove Viene La Black Art” at the American University of Rome

And so it all began with an email stating that I had been awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student grant. I would present on Black American Art while I researched operas by Giuseppe Verdi in Italy. I arrived in the country with wide eyes ready to buckle down on my research and tailor my Black Art presentations. Almost immediately, however, it became clear that it was not only about my projects. I could sense from the very beginning that I would be changed as a person. As an opera singer, I have traveled throughout the world quite often, but I have never lived in a place with a different culture and language for as extended a period of time as I did in Italy. From registering with the cities in which I would live to grocery shopping, to my one-on-one voice coachings with an Italian maestro who did not speak a touch of English, I slowly let the culture of the place wash over me. Time allowed me to notice subtleties in the language and the ways in which people interacted with one another. I began to gauge what was important in Italian culture and what was nonchalantly commonplace.

With the help of some old friends in Novafeltria, I first translated my Black Art lecture-recital into Italian (save the singing and poetry) and then contacted different venues that might host me. I performed “Da Dove Viene La Black Art” at places as awesome as the Liceo Leonardo da Vinci in Milan and the American University of Rome to a very packed audience. On the research side of things, I traveled to many beautiful cities seeking materials on the Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi. I attended lectures, operas, concerts, festivals, and so on to collect as much information as I could about the historic composer’s life and his music. I returned to the U.S. with hundreds of pages of notes and many great recordings.

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U.S. Fulbright

Un Natale Viterbese

March 5, 2015
Sara

Card games on Christmas at Valentina’s house (clockwise from front center: Sara Hales, 2014-2015, Fulbright English Teaching Assistant to Italy, Alessandro Foti, Giulio Merlani, Alessandro Petricca, Valentina Petricca, Federico Fuser, Chiara Fersini, Daniele Ragni, Cristiano Petrini, Riccardo delle Monache, Cristina Cecchetti I spent Christmas Eve and Day with one of my teachers, Orietta

I’ve been putting off writing this post because I don’t really know where to begin in describing my Italian Christmas experience. Throughout December, I anxiously anticipated my first Christmas away from my family with a mixture of excitement and dread. The holiday itself here in Viterbo, Italy, where I am working as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA), was likewise a mixture of the familiar and the new. As I walked through the bancarelle downtown, I got to see, smell, and participate in the charming European tradition of the Christmas market. But even this became a reminder of the commercialism of Christmas that many in the United States have tried to move away from. Italy is not immune from the commercialization of Christmas, and many that I’ve met here have expressed disdain for the market booths filled with useless trinkets. I was quite pleased, however, to discover a box of Christmas decorations in my apartment, so in true American fashion, I put them up the day after Thanksgiving.

A few days later, a friend came over and was surprised to see my decorations already displayed. Locals decorate for Christmas on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8. So I had jumped the gun, but this was luckily rectified by my adopted family who invited me over to have lunch and help them decorate their home on December 8.

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U.S. Fulbright

Fulbright Profile: U.S. Student Program Alumna Maaza Mengiste Shares Her Work with Girls Rising, Fulbright Experiences, and Advice for Applicants

June 23, 2014
Maaza Mengiste, 2010-2011, Italy

Maaza Mengiste, 2010-2011, Italy

Can you tell us about your work on Girl Rising, and how that project came about?

I am one of the nine writers involved with the Girl Rising project. I heard about the film when I was (ironically) in Italy on my Fulbright Fellowship. I received an email from director Richard Robbins, telling me a bit about the documentary’s mission to focus on girls education worldwide and highlight girls who are trying to overcome obstacles and go to school. He asked me if I’d be interested in taking part and writing a section for Ethiopia and I jumped at the chance. I was born in Ethiopia and my mother did not get the chance to go to college, and my grandmother and great-grandmother were married at extremely young ages. I felt I had a personal investment in the issue of girls education in Ethiopia and the particular focus of that segment: forced early marriage and how it harms girls in every way you can imagine.

What are a few of the most memorable moments from your Fulbright experience?

There are so many. Meeting other Fulbrighters, getting lost everywhere and discovering unexpected parts of Rome. Traveling through Italy and doing research in archives. Having people come up to me in surprising moments and share personal stories that were exactly what I was searching for in archives. Meeting Italians who are now lifetime friends; the Fulbright changed my life professionally and personally. Its impact is immeasurable and will be long-lasting. 

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Foreign Fulbright

Communities and Rivers in the State Named After the “Great River”

June 27, 2013
Guisy

Giusy Pappalardo, 2012-2013, Italy, standing along the Pascagoula River, the largest (by volume) unimpeded river system within the 48 contiguous United States

In a local farmers market, colorful t-shirts hang from hooks proudly proclaiming, in the words of William Faulkner, “To understand the world, you have to understand a place like Mississippi.” As a Fulbright Foreign Student from Italy studying at Mississippi State University’s (MSU’s) Department of Landscape Architecture, I have witnessed the meaning of this sentence first hand.

I’ve spent 10 months in the Deep South, traveling in an old Jeep which I obtained from another international student before he returned to India. “The car will be happy with you,” he announced when he handed me the keys. He was just one of the countless international friends I met on MSU’s campus. In our scented kitchens where we’ve shared tasty food and long conversations, I’ve learned about diverse cultures and made new connections.

Thanks to the car I inherited, it was easy to start my fieldwork. My Fulbright research has focused on the characteristics of interactions between human communities and rivers. I’m from the Italian island of Sicily, where I conducted Participatory Action Research with a network of grassroots NGOs that are trying to save the Simeto River, an important river in Sicily. The similarities between the Mississippi and the Simeto rivers are not based on physical characteristics. Rather, they are based on shared meanings and benefits which rivers can offer to the communities through which they flow throughout the world. My Fulbright grant has given me the opportunity to collect stories about other rivers narrated by their inhabitants. I’ve also explored some case studies with interviewees in which I’ve showed them a short video about the Simeto River in order to create a shared communality. After returning to Sicily, I will share these Mississippi-based stories with my home community through yet another video, further bridging the distance between Italy and the United States.

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