Membrane Formation with Microfluidics

The school year is over! It’s amazing to think that I’m half way done with college; time passes by so quickly.

This summer I will continue my research with my new mentor with the UC LEADS program. Our project is currently on membrane formation. We are testing out two methods of membrane formation and combining them to create a membrane that suits our needs. We are in the process of making a mold for the channel that the membrane will form in; oil and aqueous solution will be injected into the channels to form layers that join together to forma bilayer membrane.

We have created the mold with the channels, but we still need to stick it on to glass plating and test the injecting of the fluids. We will be using various solutions to figure out if they will create a membrane and if they do, what properties the membrane will have with measurements. As for long term uses for the membrane, we are unsure. We’re taking things one step at a time, so this is what most of my summer will be dedicated to.

Hope everyone has a fabulous summer! 🙂

What a Week!

In my last post I mentioned that I am going to be working with a graduate student mentor on a project rather than on an individual assignment. I still haven’t been able to meet up with the graduate student or my professor. They are so busy! I will meeting with them on Friday so  I should have more information by then.

This week has been pretty busy; I had a midterm on Tuesday and two today (Wednesday). I also have a paper that is due tomorrow, which I still have a quite bit to do. I also had an interview today for the SIMS RA position; I hope to hear from them soon!

I applied to several internship programs and I have been accepted to UCLEADS (University of California Leadership Excellence through Advanced Degrees) program here at UCSB. I will begin in the summer and it will continue until I graduate. 🙂

Lunch with Faculty is being hosted by CSEP and UCSB-SACNAS this Friday at 12PM in the Elings Hall Lobby. Come enjoy free food and conversation with professors from various disciplines.

I have to go finish my paper now. Go Lakers! 🙂

A new direction

I had been thinking about my research and the direction it was going. It wasn’t really headed towards what I had hope for; I have been independently and the research seemed to be going very slowly. I talked to my professor and we both agreed that it would be a better idea for me to work with a graduate student in his lab rather than working on my own. I will be working on her research project, but still be learning COMSOL in the process. Rather than random assignments, I will be able to use and learn COMSOL for a specific project. I think this will not only help me learn how to use COMSOL with a bit more guidance, but it will also allow me to learn about what the graduate student is working on.

Some of the details are still being worked out, but once things have been figured and I know who I will working on, I will be able to give a bit more information as to what I will be spending my time on. 🙂

I have been extremely busy and it’s only the second week of the quarter! We have our annual SACNAS Outreach program this upcoming week; we have been putting in a lot of time planning and working out details for the arrival of the high school students. I have also had quite a bit of school work (readings for my ge’s are ridiculous!).

Have a great week! 🙂

A little late…

So sorry, I’m a bit late on my blog, which should have been update before the quarter was over. I guess I was so focused and stressed out about finals. I spend dead week and finals week doing basically nothing but studying for my classes.

I was able to spend time on research, although not as much as I had wanted to. I have been working on assignments given to me by Luke and things are going well. I worked on a model of equations that represented waves and how changing different parameters changes the results of the wave. I’m still blown away with the amount of things that COMSOL can be used for.

I’m continuing on those things this quarter and I’m going to be able to spend more time on research since I’m taking less units this quarter. I also only have 2 major classes this quarter as opposed to 5 last quarter. Yay for spring! 🙂

Hope everyone had a fabulous spring break and is ready for this quarter with hopefully amazing weather!

Midterms are over! Hallelujah! With 4 midterms in the past week and a half, I have done nothing but study study study. To add to that, I began to get sick on Thursday night, which lasted throughout the weekend and has finally cleared up today. 🙂

With that, I have spend little to almost no time on research. These past couple of weeks I have also been working on personal statements and applications for various internship programs both here at UCSB and outside of UCSB. Since midterms are over and most internship applications are done and submitted, I can finally devote more time to working on my COMSOL problems.

Hopefully, I will be able to give a more detailed update of working with COMSOL in the next blog.

SACNAS will be having its 4th and last general body meeting of the quarter on Tuesday, February 22nd and will feature a speaker from the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics (KITP) who will be talking about String Theory. It will be held in Elings 1601 at 6:30 PM. All are welcome and there will be free food. 🙂

The College of Engineering BBQ is on Friday, February 25th from 11:30AM-1:30PM. All engineers are welcome!