About Me

Yellowstone, Wyoming

My name is Taweewat Somboonpanyakul, but most people just call me "Champ" which is my official nickname, not just a English nickname that I came up for myself. I was born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand (some people might know it from The Hangover Part II, but I can tell know that not all Bangkok is like that). I enjoy traveling to different places that I have never been before. I also like to learn the history of those places so that I can appreciate each location more, and take photos of those places so that I can look at them later to call back my memories.

PS. Feel free to email me anything at my email address: leogulus at gmail dot com

Education

I graduated high school once from Thailand at Mahidol Wittayanusorn School (MWITS) before moving to North Carolina at Asheville School to study my senior year again while doing college application. Then, I got in University of Chicago where I am studying physics as an undergraduate student.

As an undergraduate student who major in physics, I spent my last two summer working in an astrophysics lab. My first research assistant job in the summer was working about Gravitational Lensing. It is the first evidence that proved 'general relativity' developed by Albert Einstein is correct. My main topic for this research is to test the ability of find such a gravitational lensing using technique that my professor developed by creating fake arcs and see how completely we can find these fake ones. My second and current research topic is about exoplanet which is just became famous less than twenty years. We work with data from Kepler Space Telescope, but unfortunately the mission seemed to be stop indefinitely due to technical problems on the telescope. My main topic is planets around short period binary stars. In addition, for my senior thesis for undergraduate study, I am studying circumgalactic medium using background quasars in group environment. From this project, I had some experience using spectrum in the optical (for composition of circumgalactic medium surrounding nearby galaxies) and UV (for absorption line from background QSOs) range.

I am currently at MIT in the Physics PhD program (started in Fall 2015) with a focus on Astrophysics. My current project with Prof. Michael McDonald is to study the properties of galaxy clusters which host active galactic nuclei (AGN) in its brightest cluster galaxy (BCG). I am working mostly with optical (with Magellan/SDSS) and X-ray (with Chandra).

Why I'm Here

This blog is really personal and just a place for my families and my friends to keep in touch with me. I am quite bad at telling story of my own experience when we are in a big group and I also do not like to make a long phone call. I felt that this blog will be a good place for them to learn more about my stories, what I have learned while I'm aboard and my new experience.

Mostly, I just want to write something down and kept it as my personal journal that I will smile to myself once I looked back at these post years later.

May 10, 2013