Faculty Mentor: Sudhir Nayak Student: John Fang The objective of this summer’s project was to the study the regulation of GLD-1 (defective in Germ Line Development), a RNA binding protein that is important for normal germ-line development in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans). In mutant strains where GLD-1 is not expressed, hermaphroditic oogenesis… Continue Reading
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Characterization of Tissue Damage via Dynamic Heart Phantom and MRI
Faculty Mentor: Karen Yan Student: Robert Seither Heart disease is the primary cause of death in the United States. Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology has been used to diagnose and evaluate a number of diseases and conditions. Given the inherent difficulty in imaging the heart in motion, cardiac MRI studies often use heart phantoms… Continue Reading
Particle Imaging Velocimetry Studies of Fluid Flows
Faculty Mentor: Paul Wiita Student: Daniel Sprague Continue Reading
Exploring Blazar Variability with the Kepler Satellite
Faculty Mentor: Paul Wiita Students: Paolo DiLorenzo, Mitchell Revalski, & Dan Sprague During the summer of 2012 Paolo Di Lorenzo, Daniel Sprague, and Mitchell Revalski conducted research in the field of active galactic nuclei under the advisement of Dr. Paul Wiita. The purpose of this research project was to search for periodic luminosity variations in… Continue Reading
Computational approaches to frequency doubling in nonlinear materials
Faculty Mentor: David McGee Student: Dacoda Nelson & Jan Brauburger Nonlinear optical materials are integral to applications in spectroscopy, medical diagnostics, and telecommunications. Novel high performance materials generate nonlinear optical effects through controlled alignment of highly conjugated dipolar molecules. Spatially probing this alignment on a material surface is critical to the development of these materials,… Continue Reading
Photoswitchable refractive index gratings in novel nonlinear optical films
Faculty Mentor: David McGee Student: Michael Erickson Continue Reading
Optically induced birefringence in hybrid organic-inorganic carbon nanotube films
Faculty Mentor: David McGee Students: Mina Shenouda Carbon nanotubes constitute a relatively new class of nanostructures with unique mechanical, electronic, and optical properties. They find applications in multiple technologies such as microelectronics, image display, and optical sensing. One particularly promising architecture is functionalized carbon nanotubes, in which an optically active azobenzene chromophore is bound to… Continue Reading
Measuring growth kinetics of nanoscale ice crystals using Spectroscopic ellipsometry and environmental scanning electron microscopy
Faculty Mentor: Nathan Magee Student: Andrew Miller We studied the optical properties of ice crystals using environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM). The ESEM allowed us to image the mesoscopic surface of ice crystals, and rough surface topography (including linear strands, crevasses, islands, and steps) was discovered at an unprecedented level of magnification: 10,000x. We used an… Continue Reading
Mathematical Modeling of Cancer Progression: the Impact of Invasion and the Immune System
Faculty Mentor: Jana Gevertz Students: Warren Jagger Cancer is a complex disease characterized by several major “hallmarks” that disrupt the normal state of a cell. My project focused on developing a mathematical model of tumor progression while concentrating on one cancer hallmark: the interaction between a tumor and the immune system. I developed a 2D… Continue Reading
Conducting Robot
Faculty Mentor: Andrea Salgian Students: Michael Bauer & Laurence Agina The goal of this project is to design, fabricate, and assemble a humanoid robot can conduct an orchestra with a large, varied, and non-predetermined repertoire. The robot was designed using CAD (Computer Aided Design) software. Both of its arms have four degrees of freedom, each… Continue Reading