Our Research Program for Standout Undergraduates
The Department of Chemical Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering offer a joint honors program to a select group of their undergraduate students. The program begins in the students’ second year, focuses on getting them research experience starting their third year and prepares them to produce an undergraduate thesis in their final year.
Research results are presented at the annual Undergraduate Research Conference at UC Davis. The research, thesis and presentation are prepared in consultation with a faculty member from the department. A list of students, projects and advisors for projects beginning in spring 2014 is shown below.
Participants in this program gratefully acknowledge the generous financial support of John and Gina Wasson.
For more information on the honors program, please contact our undergraduate advisors.
| Student | Advisor | Project | Year Completed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alexandra Moskaluk | McDonald | Purification and Characterization of Newcastle Disease Virus’ Antigenic Protein, Hemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HN) | 2014 |
| Chris Guido | Ristenpart | A Solutal Fingering Instability during Capillary Imbibition in Fibrous Media | 2014 |
| Gil Benezer | Dungan | Analysis of Agarrose Sol-Gel Phase Behavior in the Presence of Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate | 2014 |
| Evan Forman | Stroeve | Tunable drug release from lipid bilayer coated superparamagnetic Fe₃O₄/mesoporous silica nanoparticles using PEO-PPO-PEO triblock copolymers | 2014 |
| Nicholas Talken | Ristenpart | Electrofluidic properties of colloidal particles | 2014 |
| David J. Bilsky | Moulé | DISC Patterning of Polymer Microstructures using Light Interference | 2015 |
| Zhimin Xie | Schoenung | Hazard and Life Cycle Assessment of Titanium Dioxide Nanoparticles when Applied as Antimicrobial Coatings in Textiles | 2015 |
| Cori Satkowski | Faller | Molecular Dynamics of Lipid Bilayer Morphology Modifications Induced by Hydroquinones | 2015 |
| Yang-Denis Su | Phillips | Diffusion in Carbopol Solutions and Gels | 2015 |
| Tony Ting Li | Kuhl | Wettability Comparison of Hydrophobic Surfaces | 2015 |
| Jillian Doherty | Phillips | Intrinsic Viscosity of Dilute Carbopol Solutions | 2016 |
| James Makel | Stroeve | Thermally and Chemically Responsive Nanoporous Materials for Efficient Capture of Fission Product Gases | 2016 |
| Xuan Mo | Schoenung | Microstructure and Thermal Stability of Nanocyrstalline AI Powders Produced by Cryomilling | 2016 |
| Lixian Huang | Risbud | Processing Induced Anomalous Superconductivity in Spark Plasma Sintered Bulk YBCO | 2016 |
| Allison Lo | Stroeve | Development and Functionization of Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery | 2016 |
| Bradley Petkus | Stroeve | Poly(n-isopropylacrylamide)-poly(ethylene) Glycol Co-Functionalized Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles for Improved, Thermoresponsive Protein Delivery | 2016 |
| Doniko Kingi | Kuhl | Zeta Potentials of Lipid Vesicles | 2016 |
| Yue Deng | Longo | Towards Enhanced Photochemical Water Splitting through Bacteriorhodopsin/TiO₂ Sol-gel Composite | 2016 |
| Kathryn Mains | McDonald | Purification of Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Via Ion Exchange Membrane Chromatography | 2016 |
| Ryan Kopa | Mahajan | Effect of Convolutional Neural Networks on Automating Materials Science Research | 2017 |
| Shayla Nikzad | Block | Use of Mass Balance in Determining Plant Water Status of Individual Wine Grape | 2017 |
| Robert Wu | Kuhl | Thermodynamics of Lipid Monolayers | 2017 |
| Benjamin Chang | McDonald | Optimizing the Extraction of Recombinant Butyrylcholinesterase from Transgenic Rice Cell Suspension Cultures | 2018 |
| Diego Docto | Kuhl | Zeta Potential of Vesicles in Ionic Solution | 2018 |
| Anjana Jayaraman | Ristenpart | Centrifugation Induced ATP Release from Red Blood Cells | 2018 |
| Wyatt Liao | Longo | Determining Ions’ Effects on Micelle Sizes | 2018 |
| Florence Rusly | Castro | Synthesis and Characterization of Porous Magnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles | 2018 |
| Justin Mulvery | Moule | Photothermal Projection Lithography: A new approach to patterning thin film organic seminconductors | 2019 |
| Peifen Lyu | Takamura | Antiferromagnetic Domain Patterns in Patterned La0.7Sr0.3FeO3 Thin Films | 2019 |
| Alice Fergerson | Moule | Sequential Doping of Organic Semiconducting Polymers | 2020 |
| Sachit Nagella | Seker | Implementing and Building Computational Models of Electrochemical and Transport Phenomena in Porous Thin-Film Electrodes for Nucleic Acid Detection | 2021 |
| Suzan Almashtoub | Seker | Tuning Probe Concentration and Nanoporous Gold Electrode Thickness for Optimal Electrochemical Detection of Nucleic Acids | 2021 |
| Karina Masalkovaite | Moule | Using DCS-Flow to Calculate Phonon Modes for TTF-TCNQ | 2021 |
| Nichole Yacoub | Moule | Analysis of solution-mixed and sequentially processed F4TCNQ doped P3AT films: developing a predictive model for doping efficiency | 2021 |
| Anika Varma | McDonald | Hydrogel Immobilization of Transgenic Rice Cells for Scalable Production of Recombinant Butyrylcholinesterase | 2021 |
| Joshua Lau | Ristenpart | Effect of Electrolyte on Aggregation and Bifurcation of Colloidal Particles near Electrodes Under AC Electric Fields | 2021 |
Publications
| Student | Advisor | Project | Publication |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nicholas Talken | Ristenpart | Electrofluidic properties of colloidal particles | Hexatic-to-Disorder Transition in Colloidal Crystals Near Electrodes: Rapid Annealing of Polycrystalline Domains |
| Zhimin Xie | Schoenung | Hazards of manufacturing of cosmetics | Hazard and Life Cycle Assessment of Titanium Dioxide Nanoparticles when Applied as Antimicrobial Coatings in Textiles |