Jamie Cookson

Jamie Cookson is a student who has been on an educational journey for the past few years at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.  She is currently a senior who will be graduating at the end of this year with a B.A. in Physics.  It is her goal that the knowledge and experience gained from this enthralling journey will have a positive impact on the future journeys in which her son will ultimately partake.

Home Island: Big Island
High School:
Institution when accepted: University of Hawaii at Hilo

Akamai Project: Housing Construction for ASHRA Detectors

Project Site: Institute for Astronomy, Hilo

Mentors: Yoichi Asaoka and John Hamilton

Project Abstract:

The ASHRA experiment (All-Sky Survey High Resolution Air-Shower Detectors) is a collaboration between the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo and the University of Tokyo-Japan.  The experiment implements 28 detectors on the 11,000 ft. level of Mauna Loa in Hawai‘i, to detect air showers created by collisions between particles in Earth’s atmosphere and high-energy particles.  My involvement with the experiment has been to construct housings for the detectors.  This included leveling the land, assembling the walls and roofs, installing the steel frames for the detectors, and putting in shutter doors and insulation.  By the end of the internship I had completed 18 detector housings.  The information gained from the future observations made by the ASHRA experiment will help in determining candidates for cosmic ray sources.