Celebrating a Bachelor’s Degree Milestone – Neutron Scattering Research Group

Graduation ceremony. (Image credit: Siiri Kumari/University of Tartu)

This June, our colleague Maria Kulikova completed her three-year Bachelor’s studies and received her degree in Physics.

Maria’s first experience with the Neutron Scattering Research Group was in 2025, during the course Loodusteadusliku meetodi seminar (LTFY.01.012). The aim of this course is to give students their first hands-on research experience. As part of it, Maria presented her work on computational insights into the orange carotenoid protein, supervised by Jörg Pieper and Maksym Golub. This computational study was designed to mimic quasielastic neutron scattering experimental data to study protein’s vibrations and localized diffusion.

In the same year, Maria joined our group and chose to continue working on this topic for her Bachelor’s thesis, extending her simulations to now complement neutron spin-echo experiments to investigate protein’s interdomain motion. She successfully defended her thesis in early June, marking an important milestone in her academic journey. Her thesis will soon be publicly available in DSpace.

Maria will continue her studies at the University of Tartu, pursuing a Master’s degree in Physics.

Banner image credit: Siiri Kumari/University of Tartu