Reina Ishibashi

Class of 1970 |
  • Mathematics
Mathematics
Where are they now
Carroll College
Reina Ishibashi Picture

About

Carroll College is the only undergraduate institution in the world which can claim to have a partnership with the world-renowned W. M. Keck Observatory on the Big Island of Hawaii. This partnership is thanks to the connections and support of Roy Simperman ‘62, and his wife, Frances, and we have celebrated two years of our Carroll-Keck fellowship. 

This year, Reina Ishibashi ‘20, is serving as the Carroll Keck Fellow. She received her BA in Mathematics Education (5-12) and a minor in computer science from Yokohama, Japan.

Reina has learned about how a world-class astronomical observatory works, how data science software applications are developed and deployed, and how engineering teams address daily technical challenges. She is interacting with astronomers, engineers in different disciplines, as well as software developers. This winter and spring, she has the opportunity to participate in real projects applying her knowledge in computer science and mathematics. She collaborates with other software engineers to specify requirements, design software components, and to document the development process.

Reina provided the following update on her work in January 2021:

Currently, I am working on coming up with an alternative program for the low bandwidth wavefront sensor program that is currently used at Keck. This combines my skills in programming, mathematics, and data science. It is definitely challenging yet rewarding. I am fascinated that the project I am working on right now can assist the observing astronomers with calibrating the telescopes. I have been working on this project since November, and it is amazing to see how far I’ve come along the way. Although this project is pretty big in size, it has taught me to break the steps down into smaller pieces and work on one step at a time. This is something that I did not have much exposure to in college.