Over the next six years, Niemack completed lab work and internships at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) and Princeton University, published "The Evolution of the Universe" in the Griffith Observer and completed a senior thesis called "The Search for the Cause of Tunneling in Molecular Magnets"-among many other things. Now he approaches the summer before his first year of graduate school at Princeton, one of the best graduate programs for physics in the country. What started as an "interest" in science has turned into a passion; he has an exceptional talent for both theoretical and experimental physics. But then, that seems to be Niemack's way-a little bit of dabbling leads to a lot of discovering, passion and commitment.
Experiencing some NUVIEWS
After finishing his first year at Amherst, Niemack decided he wanted to try his hand at real-world physics projects. He contacted Peter Friedman, a man he met in high school while watching the landing of the Mars Pathfinder at Caltech, and secured himself a summer volunteer position. Friedman found opportunities for Niemack working on NUVIEWS, [an experiment to study interstellar medium in the Milky Way galaxy,] under Caltech scientist David Schiminovich. He spent the first week learning a graphical computer language-"it's really simple logic to understand," said Niemack-though he had no background in programming at the time.
"He had never worked in any lab like the one that we had, and in a matter of weeks he had already figured out how to write computer software to control our equipment," said Schiminovich. "There was very little that he was not able to pick up quickly. Here he was, this undergrad zooming through everything. He's a good guy, too, very sociable-people like to talk to him."
At Caltech, Niemack also helped conduct experiments, testing four ultra-violet telescopes in a vacuum chamber to observe their responses to different inputs of ultraviolet light.
"After about a month, I said, 'If you don't start paying me, I'm going to go backpacking for the rest of the summer,'" he said. Niemack got his pay and, at the end of the summer, decided he wanted to take the next year away from college to continue working for NUVIEWS and dabble in some other endeavors: a three-month outdoor program with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) in Lander, Wyo., and possible enlistment in the U.S. Air Force. In the meantime, he had begun work on a NASA-sponsored Caltech project called GALEX (Galaxy Evolution Explorer), developing an ultraviolet satellite telescope that would study galaxy evolution throughout the history of the universe.
"I was able to get involved in all the hands-on aspects of the research. A few of the experiments I ran entirely on my own," said Niemack. "It was definitely unusual that I was taking time off, and getting paid well enough to make me want to stay. It was partly luck and partly being in the right place at the right time."
But Schiminovich wouldn't call it "luck." "I'm about 12 years out of college," Schiminovich said. "And I've worked with 30 or 40 different undergrads, and Mike is definitely the best. He's one of the few people that I had no doubt would be doing interesting things a few years from now."
Continuing research wasn't the only reason Niemack decided to take a year off. During the spring of his freshman year, he'd spent the semester doing some ROTC training at UMass and "hanging out on air force bases." After he applied for an ROTC scholarship, the Air Force offered him enough to pay for two of the next three years at Amherst. Unsure about whether or not he wanted to accept-he'd have to work for the air force for four years after graduating-Niemack had further incentive to take the year off to consider his options.
Taking it outside
By the time the next spring had rolled around, Niemack decided he'd take a 90-day leadership course with NOLS, which included winter camping, canyoneering, river running, rock-climbing and group leadership training.
"I love being outside," Niemack said. "It's one of my passions, maybe even more so than being a scientist." Ever since his dad took him on his first three-day backpacking excursion, Niemack's been addicted. "My friends and I started going backpacking on the coast of California, partying, and just having a great time." Of his experience at NOLS, Niemack said he "had an incredible time learning about all kinds of stuff-from building and living in snow caves to white-water kayaking, rock-climbing, mountaineering and living in the wilderness without damaging it at all. I really want to go back and become a NOLS instructor." Niemack plans to do just that sometime next year if he can "afford to escape from Princeton for five weeks."
Upon completing the NOLS course, Niemack took an 80-hour wilderness first aid course at the Wilderness Medicine Institute in Santa Cruz, Calif., and gained a Wilderness First Responder certification. He later worked for Dear Hill Expeditions in Mancos, Colo., leading a group of 12 high school students backpacking and rock-climbing on a 21-day immersion course, in addition to teaching classes in astronomy, rock climbing and other outdoor skills.
Walls of Niemack
By the end of another summer working at Caltech, Niemack had decided to decline the ROTC scholarship. He returned to Amherst, continuing to work remotely for the GALEX team from Caltech until March of 2001.
Niemack began his sophomore year as a (residence counselor) RC in James Hall and started leading trips with the Outing Club, eventually becoming a board member. Throughout his experience with the club, Niemack led backpacking trips in Colorado and Peru, as well as many day hikes and rock-climbing trips.
In October of 2000, he proposed the building of a rock-climbing facility for Amherst students in the basement of Pond Dormitory. He designed, acquired funding and built the facility by February of 2001.
Upon returning to Amherst, Niemack rejoined the club water polo team and served as captain and coach for the next two years.
"My life blood is water polo," Niemack said. "[The Amherst team] is a great group of guys to hang out with, and I love the sport-I have since I hopped in the pool my sophomore year of high school."
In addition to the water polo team, Niemack also joined The Athenian Society his sophomore year, which promotes intellectual discussion among the student body by organizing discussions and lectures led by both professors and students.
By January of his sophomore year, he decided to load some more on his plate, and began leading discussion sections and assisting laboratories for lower level physics majors, in addition to grading their work. As a help session teacher, grader, lab assistant and technician, he built a new experiment on quantized conductance for the "Relativity and Quantum Physics" course lab section.
Around the same time, Niemack founded MASStorage, a summer storage company for students at the College, with two other RCs. Not surprisingly, MASStorage was not his first experience with business-as a high school student, he'd worked for a network marketing company.
"Some other RCs and I had talked about how it could be lucrative to start a storage business," Niemack said. "We rent a big-ass truck during finals week, collect people's stuff, give them contracts, get storage and return it in the fall. We haven't made a lot yet-last year was kind of a lost year-but we've improved our advertising a lot and made modifications to our business plan that should help us out."
One of his co-workers, who also works on outing club adventures with Niemack and is part of The Athenian Society, is Paris Wallace '04. "Mike is leaving Amherst with a legacy," Wallace said. "He has been involved in so many things has been successful at pretty much anything that he puts his mind to."
Looking to the future
After Niemack finished his junior year at Amherst, he headed to the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory to work with the Hall Thruster Research Group on a national undergraduate fellowship sponsored by the Department of Energy. At Princeton, he worked under Dr. Yevgeny Raitses and Dr. Nathaniel Fisch, studying divergence in the plasma plume of hall thrusters, or plasma propulsion rockets designed for use on satellites and near-earth missions. His work for Princeton mostly involved writing computer programs to study data.
"He is an excellent guy," Raitses said. "Personally, too-he got really quickly in touch with all our guys who work on the project, and he was accepted by everybody. I never heard a 'no' from him, no matter what I proposed for him to do. He's very good, both in theory and experiment. He ran so deep trying to help us."
Last fall, Niemack was flown to Long Beach, Calif., to do a poster presentation called "Plume Comparisons between Segmented Channel Hall Thrusters" based on his work at Princeton the summer before.
Niemack has spent the past year writing a thesis and studying magnetic molecules. His thesis advisor, Professor of Physics Jonathan Friedman, describes Niemack as "adept at doing both theory and experiment. I think he's going to be a great scientist one day. He has not only great scientific skills, he's also a very good writer which is an under-appreciated skill in science these days."
Around the time Niemack completed his thesis, he was also facing some tough decisions about graduate school. Accepted at Princeton, MIT, Caltech, Berkeley and Stanford, he chose Princeton.
"Princeton cosmology research is really good, and I was guaranteed a spot in this group that will send me to Chile and probably to South Africa, too," said Niemack. "I'll be able to get involved in a project that's just beginning and hopefully I'll see it all the way through."
The "final kicker" for him, though, was that his girlfriend, Maren Vitousek-Bemis '02, was also accepted to Princeton's graduate program in Biology. The two will move to Princeton at the end of the summer, but first plan to travel around Europe and Russia for a few months.
Future goals? Niemack hopes to "contribute to the understanding and exploration of the universe and enjoy doing it ... I want to continue doing research, keep doing outdoor stuff, work all over the world, travel a lot, explore the world," he added. His work at Princeton will concentrate on "fundamental questions about our universe, such as, 'Will it expand forever, or will it collapse?' 'What is the missing matter that we don't see in our universe, where did it come from?'" And he'd still like to go into space someday.