Mindy Krzykowski

 At the 2010 Women in Physics Conference in Lincoln Nebraska, the poster is of their new Diocles laser.

Hey all, I'm Mindona (Mindy) Krzykowski from North Pole, Alaska of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.  I will be graduating with a B.S. in Physics from UAF next Dec, I already have a B.A...yeah it's a little funky, but that works for me.  Last summer I participated in LPSA and started a project that I continued working on over the spring semester under a fellowship at UAF.  The project is "Identifying and characterizing VXB events on the lunar surface from the Apollo 14 Suprathermal Ion Detector Experiment (SIDE)" with Michael Collier, Bill Farrell and Kent Hills and I will be continuing the work over this LPSA internship of 2011 and prepare a poster for NASA's Lunar Science Institute Forum in July. I also have been accepted to present at the 62nd International Astronautical Federation Conference in S.Africa October 2011.  Then it's off to graduate school somewhere in the 'lower 48' (as we refer to the continental USA in Alaska). All very exciting!

I'm a pretty diverse person so I enjoy a lot of activities and generally I'm up to try new stuff.  I enjoy: art, music, painting, crafts, reading, journal-ing, singing, softball, martial arts, most anything in nature like hiking, walking, gardening, mindless physical labor like the roofing I did the two summers before I got the LPSA internship last summer.  I love rocks, dogs and learning about all that I can.  I have two older brothers the eldest is a mechanic at my parents automotive shop (if you have ever seen Ice Road Truckers my dad runs the semi-truck wrecker in AK and you have probably seen him!) and my other brother is a mechanical engineer at BP (who is to get married this summer!!!), I'm the oddball that everyone encouraged to 'follow my heart' and it landed me in Physics/astrophysics so far.  Being the youngest with two older brothers in Alaska I've been raised to be pretty tough, but I'm still a girl and love cute puppies, and pretty, sparkly things.  I'm still not sure that the reason I got interested in physics/astrophysics was because of the raw beauty of stars, nebula, planets and galaxies because lets face it they are down right amazing to look at.     

I look forward to getting to know everyone in the 2011 LPSA group, I'm sure it is going to be an exciting and fun filled summer! See you on the other side.