Andrew Santos

2020 Fulbright U.S. Student Program Grantee

Hometown

Valparaiso, IN

Major

Physics

College

College of Science; Honors College

 

Andrew Santos has been awarded a Fulbright offer to research neutrinos with the Leprince-Ringuet Laboratory (LLR) at École Polytechnique in Annecy, France. As Santos notes, scientists have known about the existence of neutrinos for decades, but still have little understanding of their function. Santos plans to test whether neutrinos decay over time. This is a natural extension of experimental work for Santos, who worked on neutrino oscillations in a summer REU program in astrophysics.

 

A strong proponent of multicultural and multidisciplinary approaches, Santos says, “Understanding the intersection of physics, language, and mathematics will be crucial to advancements in physics research.” An amateur musician, Santos also minored in Astronomy, Mathematics, and Business French.

 

Santos is also a co-founder of Purdue Impact Theory, a communications organization for science students that focuses on outreach and public science education. While he served as president of the organization, they worked with local high school students on a two-month research project exploring aspects of the scientific method to encourage creative scientific thinking.