University of Maryland Quantum Materials Center
Undergraduate Research Assistant, since January 2020
College Park, Maryland
In August 2019, I began my life at college.
It was during my first semester at the University of Maryland, when I took Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism that I had the chance to meet Dr. Richard L. Greene (Who've I've had the pleasure of working with for the last few years). I was introduced to his laudable persona on that first day of class in August. I came in, prepared for the worst, but hoping for the best, when I spotted him standing next to a big red balloon up at the front of class. Wondering what it was all about, I discovered moment later, when he quietly lit a match, brought it to the balloon, and it blew up. I knew right then that it was going to be a fantastic semester.
That first semester was a great experience for me, and from it I soon got the opportunity to work with Dr. Greene on his research at the Quantum Materials Center where I've been working as a research assistant since January 2020.
At the Quantum Materials Center, I worked initially with Nick Poniatowski (a brilliant undergrad), and now with Tarapada Sarkar and Pampa Sarkar (wonderful postocs) on producing and analyzing superconducting Lanthanum Cerium Copper Oxide (LCCO) thin-films. The end goal of this research is to gain a better understanding of superconductivity, the underlying physics, and then to use that to create a high-temperature superconductor (The holy-grail of superconductor research).
The process for creating these thin-films uses the Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) process. At the QMC, I use a KrF excimer laser to vaporize a target made of LCCO which then settles on a Strontium Titanate (STO) substrate in a vacuum. I cover the details of this process in the paper I attached below.
Over the last 2 years, I've had to chance to work with and talk with many other postdocs and professors working working on other projects at the QMC, and I've had the chance to make friends with the other undergrads there.
I recently was able to take a trip to the Los Alamos National Laboratory for high magnetic field experiments on the samples I've been producing, and I'm looking forward to analyzing the results.
(If you're curious about the picture on the left, its a picture I took of the PLD system I use to produce LCCO samples. That chamber and I have gotten weel acquainted with each other)
University of Maryland Physics Department
Physics Teaching Assistant, August 2020 - May 2021
College Park, Maryland
At the start of my sophomore year at the University of Maryland, I was got the chance to be a teaching assistant for the Electricity and Magnetism course that I had taken my fall freshmen semester.
As a TA, I helped students during discussion each week, hosted my own office hours, and got to know both Dr. Green and Dr. Eun Suk Seo. Teaching students and grading assignments solidified the foundations I had learned when I first took the class, and taught me how to make complex topics understandable.
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab
Circuit Design Research Intern, June 2018 - May 2019
College Park, Maryland
In the summer between my junior and senior year, I was able to work under Dr. Mark Martin to develop and test a zener diode based circuit to generate cryptographic keys. I ended up continuing at APL during the school year by taking an independent study course at my high school, giving me time to continue working until May of 2019.
At APL I helped construct zener diode based circuits, measured the output data, and then analyzed the results using Python and MATLAB. The goal was to create a purely hardware based solution to generating random cryptographic keys without using complex equiptment prone to failures.
