It’s here! Hot off the press.

M. J. Wright, A. Zambuto; L. Rodriguez, K. Goldade; J. Bier; M. A. Frey, K. Gifford, A. M. Kelly, J. St. John, B. R. Conrad, A. De La Puente, K. A. Douglass, L. Wade, C. Giuliano, J. A. Hedberg, Z. Shafique, R. Krakehl, P. Mueller, and Z. H. Ritee. Cosmic Pathways Conference: Exposure to Career Paths, Networking, and Physics Community for Early-Stage STEM Students. Phys. Teach. 64, 720–723 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1119/5.0279057. PDF.

The conference recap and data analysis of the 2025 Cosmic Pathways conference is out in The Physics Teacher. The timing couldn’t be better! Right in-between the two 2026 conferences (Chicago 10-17 and NY 11-7).

For the longest time, I was most proud of the paper I worked on was in 2007 (A. Altmeyer, S. Riedl, C. Kohstall, M.J. Wright, J. Hecker Denschlag, and R. Grimm, Collective Oscillations of the Radial Quadrupole Mode in the BEC-BCS Crossover. Phys. Rev. A 76, 033610 (2007).) It was so awesome. I was most proud of it because of how thorough we were and how much we worked as a team. Of course every paper is like that. But this paper was extra special for those reasons. Other papers were cited more or had bigger ideas. This one always stood out to me. I loved working with each one of these co-authors. And their careers have been amazing! Again, every paper is like too.

Now there is a new game in town. I am most-definitely the MOST PROUD of this latest paper on the 2025 Cosmic Pathways conference. There are so many reasons why. This was the most collaborative paper of my career. There were so many people who do amazing things. There are so many amazing different people over a whole bunch of different institutions that had their hand in this paper. It was amazing! The people organizing this event literally saved the lunch for 200 people after a major cart accident! ‘nough said!

There are few people I want to highlight here:

• Katie Gifford. The best students are the ones you learn from! Katie was so important. She was there when we first started talking about having a conference. I bounced a lot of the initial ideas off of her. When we actually ran the conference, she couldn’t come because she was in graduate school at the time. (BTW, she was amazing at CP Chicago this year.) So she did the next best thing, she wrote the initial draft of the paper (it was really good too). Katie is 100% amazing! One of the best and most humbling things is when one of your students surpases you. Fortunately for me, it has already happened a number of times. Watch Katie’s career, she is going to do amazing things!
• Angela Kelly. So if you are around NYC or LI and work in physics education you know that Angela Kelly is the GOAT. Here I come as a loud mouth upstart with crazy ideas. She could have turned me away and sent me packing. She is the GOAT after all. She didn’t. She decided to teach, mentor, and help me. She did all the initial research for this paper. She wrote the IRB. She came up with the questions and made the survey. She made the NYC/LI area PER world feel welcome for me, even though I am a pain in the butt loud mouth upstart. I am so happy she and her student have invited me to on their student’s thesis committee (just finished the thesis reading).
• Meredith Frey. It has been amazing working with Meredith Frey. She has taken what Angela Kelly started and took it to the next level. It is so amazing working with her. It is also absolutely wonderful to see the work she is doing with the Sarah Lawrence College! I am so happy we partner with her!

I could keep going! I think Angela, Katie, and Meredith spent the most amount of time on the paper. This team is so wonderful.