Participants of summer 2023

Jace Brackley

Jace is from Montgomery County Community College in Pennsylvania. His major is Mechanical Engineering Science. His summer research project at UMass Dartmouth is on “Injection Molding Carbon Fiber with an Electrolytic Polymer” to develop a structural supercapacitor. The project is aimed to support the multi-functional purpose of energy storage as well as a structural load bearing.

 

Isabella (Izzy) Burcham

Izzy is from Rogue Community College in Oregon, majoring in Biochemistry. Izzy’s summer research project at UMass Dartmouth is on “”Plasmonic Materials for Tunable Optical Camouflage”. This project is aimed to make use of gold nanoparticles of various sizes in polyethlyenimine (PEI) solventĀ  to develop different color plasmonic inks.

 

Jeannine Eichenlaub

Jeannine is from Butler County Community College in Pennsylvania. Her major is Engineering and her summer research project at UMass Dartmouth is on “Damage Sensing in liquid-metal reinforced laminated hybrid composites under projectile impact loading conditions”. The project is aimed to understand the ballistic limit, energy absorption, and damage sensing capabilities of hybrid composites of different liquid metal concentrations.

Yanni Etchi

Yanni is from Wake Technical Community College in North Carolina. His major is Computer science. His summer research project at UMass Dartmouth is on “Developing a Machine Learning Model to Predict Properties of Redox Active Materials for Nonaqueous Redox Flow Batteries”. This project’s main goal is to create a generalized quantum chemistry machine learning (ML) model for predicting electrolyte properties such as solubility, transport properties, and redox potentials.

Serena Holland

Serena is from Massasoit Community college in Massachusetts. Her major is Chemical engineering. Her summer research project is on “Synthesis and characterization of metal-hexacyanometallates for Redox flow batteries”. The projected is aimed to use several experimental tools such as centrifuge, Infrared Spectroscopy, and Scanning electron microscopy to synthesize and characterize the desired materials.

Brian McDonough

Brian is from Bunker Hill Community College in New Hampshire, majoring in Engineering Transfer Program. Brian’s summer research project at UMass Dartmouth is “Application of Superhydrophobic Coatings to Microbots to Prevent Sticking During Optical Tweezer Analysis”. The study is aimed to develop
a super-hydrophobic coatings with the properties of biocompatibility and drag resistance and they would not affect the cell’s adherence but would allow the microbots to be manipulated without the added impact of the highly bondable surface on the microslide.

Adrian Miller

Adrian is from Massachusetts Bay Community College. His major is Chemical Engineering. His summer research project at UMass Dartmouth is on “Tuning Reduction Potential of Redox-Active Material Through Quantum Mechanics Molecular Design”. The project is aimed to employ functional groups and degree of functionalization on the electronic structure of the vanadium bis-hydroxyiminodiacetate (VBH) molecule to rationalize their effect on the redox potential.

Zachary Safford

Zach is from Nashua Community College, New Hampshire. His major is Mechanical Engineering Technology. His summer research project at UMass Dartmouth is on ”
Fracture Toughness and Electrical Response of Liquid Metal Infused Carbon/ Glass Fiber Intra-ply Composites”. The project aims to identify ply configuration and liquid metal concentration on optimum fracture toughness and piezo-resistance response for damage sensing applications.

Robert Serrano

Robert is from Central Arizona College in Arizona. His major is Civil Engineering. His research project at UMass Dartmouth is on “Viability of Phenyl-, Methyl-, and Fluorine-HIDA Electrolyte for Deployment in Redox Flow Batteries”. The project is aimed to synthesize a phenyl-modified ligand; metalate; characterize using various tools such as UV spectrometer, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectrometry, and X-Ray crystallography.

 

Kennedi Williams

Kennedi is from Wake Technical Community College in North Carolina. Her major is Mechanical Engineering. Her summer research project at UMass Dartmouth is on “Design and development of Triboelectric Nanogenerator: Power and efficiency”. This project aims to characterize the correlations in specific polymers that are important materials which make Triboelectric nanogenerators efficient, powerful, and versatile.