Who I am

My name is Ibrahim Abouelfettouh. I am a recent UC Berkeley Physics graduate with minors in philosophy and journalism. I grew up in Egypt, where I learned to appreciate the simultaneous complexity and simplicity of the natural word. As a child under the assumption that adults knew everything, I remember being utterly shocked that we didn’t understand huge gaping aspects about the nature of our reality. The exponential development of our species in the last one hundred years convinced me that not only were we asking the right questions, but that we were also actually getting somewhere. These two formative personal realizations combined with the already shocking discoveries we have made sealed my decision and desire to go into physics.

What drives me

I am fascinated by changes of perspective. In pursuing this passion, I found myself inevitably involved in physics, primarily the big and the small. As such, my main curiosities thus far have been astro and particle physics. In my experience, both these areas involve the analysis and comprehension of a seemingly chaotic mess. 

Where astrophysics is concerned, the calming and confusing nature of space can only be understood through rigorous research and the development of technologies. In particle physics, using massive machinery, we create the mess to discover the tiniest yet most fundamental properties of our universe. At the end of the day, it’s really our capability to think on nature’s terms that makes thinking about physics both terrifying and enjoyable.

Through my philosophy minor, I learned that technical ideas require a foundation of scale, conceptualization and comprehension. In other words, we must be able to extract meaning from our technical results such that they can be translated to knowledge. In philosophy of science, we dug into the importance and reason we as humans collapse complexity into simplicity. Specifically, the idea that relations need not be inherent but that they are necessary to express many phenomena in terms of one framework resonated with me; this is the foundation for any theory. For this reason, I consider the field of physics to be on the border between rigorously demonstrated reality and meticulously imagined fiction. The best part is that through the scientific method, we can filter through potential creatively conceived futures, always moving in the direction of the most evident characterization of nature.

Aside from the nobility of an endeavor involved in discovering truly novel pieces of nature, I would consider the joy of imagining an inherently creative universe as my main driving force in pursuing physics. As such, exciting research is where I want to devote my motivation, work ethic and creativity.

My journalism minor taught me that an idea poorly communicated is as valuable as an idea unconceived. For this reason, I find it imperative to express complex ideas in a concise, simple yet uncompromising manner. In applying what I learned, I published a feature article about Dark Energy for the Berkeley Scientific Journal. In physics, we use concrete results to develop an imaginative picture of the world we live in I hope to continue learning how to best add to the vividness of this picture. Supplemented by leadership experience as VP of UC Berkeley’s largest international student organization and competitive Model UN team debate, I welcome the discussion of ideas that convert lifeless numbers into powerful and accurate stories.

What I’ve done

On the analytical side, I have experience analyzing NASA data. During my year with the Undergraduate Lab at UC Berkeley (ULAB), my team launched an independent project with a focus on mapping Terrestrial Gamma Ray Flashes (TGFs) through constraints on atmospheric bremsstrahlung radiation. We created a Monte Carlo Simulation that attempted to predict potential locations for TGFs, comparing known locations from NASA’s Fermi GBM satellite to our model.

During my undergraduate physics degree, I pursued particle physics as my emphasis. As such, I also have experience analyzing SLAC data. As part of my coursework final, I investigated parity violation in electron scattering from the results of the SLAC E-158 experiment. Using analytical techniques such as linear and multivariate regression, I wrote a research paper confirming the findings that parity asymmetry of Gaussian nature was present. 

During my instrumentation lab classes, COVID-learning offered the opportunity to work on our own breadboards, allowing students for the first time to create, rather than just analyze, their own experiments. Each lab offered a new way to design our own circuits, allowing us to creatively reproduce, rather than just repeat, famous analog physics experiments. As the highlight of my undergraduate degree, I enjoyed designing and fine tuning an AM radio, a Boltzmann Constant solver circuit, a surprisingly accurate heart rate monitor among countless other designs playing with RF, and analog circuitry in general. As such, I have experience using breadboards, the waveforms program, the Analog Discovery Studio, as well as LabView.

On the experimental side, I have conducted experiments in subatomic physics which include projects on optical pumping, quantum entanglement, the Hall Effect in plasma, the Balmer Series and the Zeeman Effect in Helium. It was in realizing the creativity and imagination inherent in the pioneering ideas of any new experiment, that I discovered my passion for experimental physics. Such an environment of innovation excites me.

In undertaking an internship with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, I combined my experience in analysis and instrumentation to prototype the next generation intergalactic survey. The project strives to study the accelerating expansion of space into itself, hoping to draw conclusions about the nature of space, and the fate of the universe. I was responsible for testing robotic fiber-optic positioners. In doing so, I engaged in the first steps of a novel experiment design. For example, when our scripted robotic positioners yielded unexpected results, I used a first-principles approach to troubleshoot the problem by installing a reference point and microscope to compare the visual and digital motion. I discovered that the fiber-optic cable attached may be stressed in a way that restricts the motion from the desired ellipse we predicted. I was then able to analyze our robot trajectory from our continuously improving experiment, and through GitHub and Linux, work towards optimizing and committing the motor’s control systems. The constant and meticulous revision of experimentation is motivated by an investigative and curious approach that I strive to apply wherever I work.

What I’m looking for

Tangibly, I’m looking for a job in research. Figuratively, you can say I’m looking for intellectual enrichment and the opportunity to contribute to the scientific method in some meaningful way, using the skills that I learned and developed in my undergraduate research and coursework.