Chance Baggett Named 2024 Astronaut Scholar

Chance Baggett, a rising senior in the College of Arts and Sciences studying physics and mathematics and a member of the Renée Crown University Honors Program, has been named a 2023-24 Astronaut Scholar by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF).

Founded by the Mercury 7 astronauts, the foundation awards scholarships to students in their junior or senior year who are pursuing a science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) degree with intentions to pursue research or advance their field upon completion of their degrees. Astronaut Scholars are among the best and brightest minds in STEM who show initiative, creativity and excellence in their chosen field.

After graduating from Syracuse, Baggett plans to pursue a doctoral degree and research career in the field of physics. His current research, under the mentorship of Professor Christian Santangelo, focuses on theoretical self-folding origami, an emerging branch of soft matter physics, with a particular focus on the role of elasticity in origami, which helps shed light on how certain physical materials function. Future implications of this work include in the fields of medicine, such as determining how misfolded proteins contribute to diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and space science, helping researchers engineer unique solutions to solar array deployment.

To read more about Chance and the Astronaut Scholarship, follow this link: https://news.syr.edu/blog/2023/05/26/physics-and-mathematics-major-chance-baggett-24-named-an-astronaut-scholar/