I have 10+ years of research experience in two major areas of materials science and engineering. Among numerous other small projects and duties at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I have worked on the following.
AFM showing two grains of copper indium diselenide.
In the field of semiconductors, in specific photovoltaics:
In order to solve the difficulties in studying the grain boundaries in CuInSe2, I proposed a new method of grain-boundary study: the idea of studying of a single well understood grain-boundary purposefully grown into epitaxial thin films of CuIn(Ga)Se2. The program has been broadened to two graduate students and an international collaboration with Hans Meitner Institute, funded by a National Science Foundation grant.
During this work, I’ve also helped to implement and develop various techniques in the Materials Research Laboratory for studying photovoltaics. In particular, I implemented LBIC/OBIC measurements in the Alpha-SNOM in the laser facilities in MRL.
I have also designed and implemented a radio-frequency ionized plasma physical vapor deposition assist system (i-PVD) and implemented it in our growth chamber, among numerous part designs and repairs for the growth system.
X-ray Reciprocal Space Map showing unit-cell expansion possibly due to gallium diffusion along the (100) direction
In the field of Polymer Science and Engineering:
I synthesized a new low-cost medium temperature polyester thermosetting resin based upon glyptal resins.
I studied interchain transesterification reactions (ITR) in both thermosets and thermoplastics using lap-shear measurements and compression molding of structural composites.
I created novel nanoparticulates of all aromatic thermoset polyesters using interfacial solution polymerization using ultrasound techniques.
To get a more detailed list of the things I’ve done, please feel free to contact me for my Resume and check out my Linked In page.
If you would like to contact me in regards to consulting, please feel free to use my PGP/GPG public key to ensure our discussions will remain private.
Every once in a while a simple solution gracefully solves a problem that affects a large number of people. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s wonderful to see the results. This is the type of thing most scientist hope to experience at least once in their careers. I think most of us at one point in time have hoped: “please let me improve the world in some small way to make life easier for some people.”
I have to admit as a scientist I love to see graceful solutions to any problem. Prof. Josh Silver at the University of Oxford has come up with just such a brilliant simple solution that any scientist who understands index of refraction will say: “Ahhh… yes!” about. Prof. Silver has made plastic glasses with adaptive lenses for third world countries. In third world countries to get glasses right now you have to either already know (by magic) your prescription, or try and somehow happen across an optometrist (and you thought it was just about affording a roof over your head!). Unfortunately, optometrists don’t grow on trees in third world countries, and so you’re pretty much out of luck.
Enter the “dial a prescription” solution of Prof. Josh Silver’s. With his glasses you simply turn a few dials which push plungers in or out of a syringe attached to each lens. These syringes hold a fluid which has the same index of refraction as a polymer film which flexes under pressure (positive and negative pressure). This pressure of course will bow out or bow in the surface of the “lens” (which is fixed on the edges to a certain thickness). How to know your prescription? Simple- is it clearer or not? [Much like the old A or B, A or B, A or B, 1 or 2, 1 or 2 hassle we all go through at the optometrist's office- but cut out all that binary testing... just dial it in or out- bam, there's your prescription- in fact, it's fractions of diopters even- so it's much more analog than the current system.] Pure brilliance. Such a simple problem to a complex issue.
The impact to those who can’t see? Huge! I suggest it’s almost as huge as teaching someone how to farm. People are illiterate because they can’t see things clearly enough to learn how to read or write. Prof. Silver’s solution has the possibility of changing all of that.
So, my hat is off to him as a scientist- excellent work, and much needed work!!
After finally installing Leopard (10.5) osX on my Powerbook G4 (Thesis writing computer), I noticed a strange behavior with MATLAB. MATLAB could no longer open more than one instance of itself. As well, it could no longer open a window once it had opened once in any login session. Strange behavior indeed.
Well, here’s the fix… it turns out that Leopard uses launchd to set the display. So, the old method of launching MATLAB was to set the display to 0.0, but this will fail after the first instance, hence the bug. What you can do is simply remove this line from the startup script in matlab (located within the startup application contents).
should now be: $SHELL -c 'bin/'$ARCH'/setsid bin/matlab -desktop &'
Once I changed that, everything started up fine!
ps- you will know you have this problem if you look at your console log immediately after launching MATLAB and it says something like: 6/29/10 9:03:34 AM [0x0-0x78078].StartMATLAB[23469] Warning: Unable to open display :0.0, MATLAB is starting without a display.
It’s not often that someone goes about deciding to make a film about graduate studies. It just so happens that Thirteen (PBS-NY) has done just that. Their film “Naturally Obsessed: The Making Of A Scientist” is quite an excellent snap-shot of the struggle of graduate students to get their PhD degree and accomplish something very difficult. Of course each of our struggles is unique. We are all dealing with our own situations, with our own fields (some not even in laboratories- the horror- is that real science? hahahah).
Speaking of our own struggles, what most of the public often does not get a feel for is the absolute devotion, almost to insanity, towards finding the solutions we are looking for. Many of the comments by the graduate’s spouses touched home for me. In each of the graduates followed in this film I saw bits of myself. One thing however, that is different, is the struggle for the specific protein structure. Often that struggle is a lot less well-defined. In this situation, you either get the structure of AMPK or you don’t. I guess it’s a lot like their attempts at creating crystals. Sure, you get crystals, but if they don’t have a periodic structure, you’ll never get diffraction. In my situation, the variables in our studies are very difficult to control, and so often one doubts one’s work solely on the question of reproducibility. Many scientists struggle with this same situation. People think that doing things like “measuring temperature” is a very easy thing. In reality, it is a very very difficult thing. Especially in a vacuum. That question just arose the other day in discussing our science with a new undergraduate assistant. As we talked more and more on the difficulties of measuring temperature we all saw his eyes grow larger in wonder. The simplest of problems can often be the most difficult. How accurate do you need to measure it? What standard will you use? Do you believe your thermocouple, your thermometer, or your pyrometer? What if the emissivity of the surface changes?
This is the life of a scientist. And the film below attempts to capture the lives and struggles of a few graduate students who are hoping for a career in science. It’s a struggle. But, you have heard me say that enough. To learn more about it I strongly suggest you watch this film. For the graduate student, I warn you: you’ll see yourself in this. For those who aren’t scientists: this may end up being a comedy, and I kindly refer you to Marg Simpson’s commentary on graduate students posted earlier in this blog.
My congratulations to Thirteen for doing such an excellent job on this one hour film. They didn’t have a lot of time to share with you everything regarding our struggles and achievements, but they distilled it quite well in the time available.
I'm a graduate student (PhD Candidate) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I've studied and researched in two fields of Materials Science and Engineering (Polymers and Semiconductors). My interests are as diverse as my musical tastes and I usually have my hand in some crazy project during my free time.
I'm available for consulting and have access to a world-renown materials research user-facility supported by the D.O.E. If you would like to know more, please contact me.
To learn more about it I strongly suggest you watch this film. For the graduate student, I warn you: you’ll see yourself in this. For those who aren’t scientists: this may end up being a comedy, and I kindly refer you to