From Equations to Impact: A Spotlight on Student Research
Graduate students spend years developing deep expertise in highly specialized areas. Yet much of the impact of that work often depends on whether it can be understood beyond a narrow disciplinary audience.
Being able to translate research clearly is more than just a soft skill. Effective communication is a core professional competency that shapes teaching, collaboration, funding, and public trust in scholarship. This graduate research spotlight highlights how complex, technical research can be rigorous while also remaining accessible.
Meet the Researcher
Lenox Helene Baloglou is a first-year PhD student and University Fellow in the Applied Mathematics Graduate Interdisciplinary Program (GIDP) program. Her research sits at the intersection of mathematics, physics, and aerospace engineering, addressing a classical problem that continues to shape how we plan space missions.
The Research: Solving "Lambert’s Problem"
When asked to explain her work, Lenox starts with a concrete problem rather than a formula.
“A classical problem in orbital mechanics is figuring out how much energy it takes to connect two points in space, like planets, using an elliptical orbit,” she says. “You can think of it as the trajectory of a spaceship that needs to arrive at a certain time.”
This challenge, known as Lambert’s problem, has been studied for centuries. However, Lenox points out that it is far from a purely theoretical exercise.
“When engineers plan space missions, they cannot assume everything will happen on one perfect schedule,” she explains. “There can be technical, human, or even weather delays. To plan for that, they need to solve this problem hundreds of thousands of times for different possible departure and arrival times.”
The Impact: Efficiency in Motion
Rather than solving Lambert’s problem once, Lenox’s research focuses on making the process of solving it significantly more efficient.
“My work focuses on creating a faster way to compute the solution using a mathematical approximation technique called higher order interpolation,” she says.
In simple terms, this approach allows engineers to estimate solutions more quickly based on known reference points, rather than recalculating everything from scratch each time. The result? Drastically reduced computation time and more flexibility when planning complex missions.
Lenox’s paper was accepted on January 21 to The European Physical Journal Plus. You can find the preprint currently available on arXiv, with the journal version forthcoming.
Why Translation Matters for Your Career
Like most academic research, Lenox’s work is typically introduced through technical abstracts written for mathematicians and engineers. While essential for the field, a dense abstract can make it difficult for “outsiders” to see why the work matters.
For graduate students, learning to translate specialized work into clear language is a valuable skill regardless of your career path:
- In Academia: It supports better teaching, more competitive grant writing, and smoother interdisciplinary collaboration.
- Beyond Academia: Employers often assess a candidate’s capability based on their ability to articulate the relevance of their experience, not just their technical depth.
Build Your Translation Skills
You don’t have to master this alone. The Graduate Center offers several resources to help you bridge the gap between your work and your audience:
- Professional Development Consultations: Schedule a 30-minute appointment to discuss strategies for building communication skills and other core professional competencies.
- Graduate Center Career Services: Explore resources for translating the impact of your research on job application materials, elevator pitches, and interviews.
- Grad Slam: Attend the upcoming rounds of this presentation competition to see how your peers pitch their work to non-specialist audiences. (And consider signing up next year to show off your communication skills!)
Want to be our next Graduate Student Spotlight? Our Graduate Center Newsletter celebrates the diverse work and accomplishments of our student body. If you’d like to share your graduate journey and how you’re making an impact, please reach out to us at sydnifdo@arizona.edu