ABSTRACTS for CLASS of 2026 SENIOR PROJECTS

as of September 16, 2025

These abstracts describe work that students PLAN to do in their projects; the abstracts for their final papers will generally be very different.

 

Jonathan Agrinya with Prof. Walter Lambrecht

Electronic and Magnetic Properties of MnSiN2

MnSiN2 is a magnetic transition metal nitride semiconductor (II-IV-V2) of distorted wurtzite-type structure that has been of interest due to its uncommon electromagnetic properties. Namely, in a recent paper [Phys. Rev. Mater. 7, 104406 (2023)], it has been shown to exhibit large magnetic moments which are antiferromagnetically ordered with high Néel temperature and undergo a canting transition at a slightly lower temperature. Recently, the phenomenon known as altermagnetism has piqued the interest of researchers. Whereas anti-ferromagnetism relates two spin sites by a translation or inversion, altermagnetism relates the sites by a rotation. Based on the structure, we hypothesize that MnSiN2 is an altermagnet. In this project, MnSiN2’s electronic band structure and magnetic properties and spin ordering will be investigated via Questaal’s first principle density functional theory and self consistent GW calculations utilizing the CWRU high performance computer.

Xuanren Chen with Prof. Xuan Gao

Flexible 2D Semiconductor Devices

Two-dimensional (2D) materials are at the forefront of flexible electronics research due to their unique combination of mechanical flexibility and exceptional electronic properties. Building on previous experience fabricating MoS₂-based devices on silicon and suspended platforms, this senior project explores the use of indium selenide (InSe) as a new channel material for flexible 2D devices.

The project will focus on developing InSe-based devices on various polymeric substrates, such as PDMS, PET, or other flexible films, with the goal of evaluating their potential for integration into flexible or wearable technologies. In addition to standard fabrication and electrical testing, the project will include exploratory studies of how device performance responds to mechanical deformation or environmental factors, depending on feasibility. These investigations aim to reveal general trends in the behavior of InSe on flexible supports and compare its performance to more established materials like MoS₂.

MG Davis with Prof. Jesse Berezovsky

The Origins of Tonal Metric Hierarchy: Combined Mean Field Model of Musical Harmony and Rhythm

A combination of harmony and rhythm are used to create enjoyable musical patterns. In previous research, the phase transitions between “ordered” and “disordered” states have been studied for harmony and rhythm separately. In this project, we combine them into one mean field model. We plan to create a phase diagram using this model and examine the transitions between the disordered and ordered states of both harmony and rhythm. In doing so, we expect to see patterns emerge as a result of the harmony and rhythm interacting with each other, much like a multiferroic phase diagram.

Samuel Diener with Prof. Jesse Berezovsky

Design & Fabrication of Coil for Differential Kerr Microscopy

I’m working on creating coils to induce an oscillating magnetic field, in order to do Kerr microscopy on magnetic nanostructures. Also, I am designing a stand to hold the coils in place. This will lead into research on fabricating new magnetic materials to better control spin qubits. This would improve computation in quantum computing.

Jacob Hannan with Prof. Michael Martens

Investigating the role of dipole-dipole interactions between spins on the measured T2 relaxation times in magnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF)

Magnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF) is a novel quantitative MR imaging technique that matches the signal from tissue voxels subjected to a pseudorandom sequence of RF pulses to a dictionary of simulated spin responses for various T1 and T2 relaxation times based on the Bloch equations, thereby calculating the T1 and T2 times for imaged tissue. Existing MRF simulations assume no dipole-dipole interactions exist between spins, but the effect of such interactions on T2 times has been demonstrated to be non-negligible in NMR spectroscopy and MRI in certain circumstances. This project aims to simulate how spins behave in response to MRI pulse sequences when dipole-dipole coupling is considered, with the goal of informing about the significance of such coupling to the determination of T2 relaxation time by MRF.

Ziyi Huang with Prof. Johanna Nagy

Exploring Forebaffle Materials for Taurus with Time-Reversed Optical Modeling

Taurus is a balloon-borne instrument that carries three refracting telescopes to observe Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization and Galactic foregrounds. In this work, I will simulate beam sidelobe pick-up for Taurus, an instrumental system that distorts cosmological observations by mixing information from different parts of the sky. I will use a time-reversed, non-sequential Zemax model of Taurus’ three-lens optical design to evaluate reflecting, scattering and absorbing materials for the forebaffle surface. Ray bundles will be  launched from the detector plane, propagated through the lenses, and  onto the sky, enabling direct measurements  of spillover and sidelobe formation. Generating beam maps and angular power spectra with the three different setups, we will be  able to optimize the forebaffle design to mitigate sidelobe pickup.

Zachariah Jones with Prof. Giuseppe Strangi

ENZ for High-Efficiency Upconversion in Nanoparticles

Photon upconversion (UC) is a well-established and documented energy-transfer process in the scientific literature for producing higher energy photos from lower energy photons in the SWIR range and offers enormous potential for overcoming the limitations of current SWIR systems. Although extensively researched for applications such as bioimaging, photovoltaics, and data storage the primary challenge is the low efficiency of the process in stand-alone nanoparticle systems. Significant efficiency enhancement of the upconversion process can be obtained by placing the UCNPs in the near-field region of engineered open-cavity ENZ metamaterials. Upon exploiting these materials’ strong enhancement and slow light effects, we aim to control the interaction between light and matter in upconversion systems.

Karisa Liaw with Prof. Robert Brown and Dr. Robert Deissler
 
A Novel Low-Cost Instrument for Effective, High-Volume Capture and Detection of T Cells in Immunotherapy
 
Chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) T cell immunotherapy is a groundbreaking treatment that reprograms a patient’s own T cells to target and attack cancer cells. Despite its success, a major barrier to accessibility of the treatment is the collection of sufficient T cells from the patient, a process that is both technically challenging and costly. The ongoing CAPGLO physics project led by Dr. Robert Brown and Dr. Robert Deissler is an interdisciplinary initiative (with the CWRU School of Medicine) seeking to address this challenge by developing a low-cost instrument capable of efficiently capturing and detecting T cells from large volumes of blood. The process would involve binding magnetic beads to the T cells, concentrating and extracting the T cells using magnetic gradient fields, and then removing the magnetic beads for T cell transduction. Current efforts are focused on optimizing the capture process and increasing the system’s volume capabilities.

Serena Lynas with Prof. Glenn Starkman and Dr. Craig Copi

Implication of Boundary Surface(s) on the Spherical Harmonics of the Cosmic Microwave Background

I will investigate the possibility of a boundary surface (e.g., a potential wall) existing in the universe. What impact would that have on solutions to the Helmholtz equation? Could this be observed in the correlation between different random coefficients of the spherical harmonics of the CMB?

Ojas Potdar with Prof. Michael Hinczewski

Evolution of Drug Resistance with Ecological Interactions and Time-Varying Population Sizes

Previous studies show that ecological interactions between cells in an evolving disease population can have significant impacts: pre-existing drug-resistant mutations survive longer due to these interactions, making it more likely that such a mutant is around when the treatment starts. Analytical theory supported by numerical simulations was developed to describe the distribution and survival times of these mutants. The purpose of this project will be to build on this analytical theory while now incorporating dynamic population sizes (N) from generation to generation since in reality populations can grow and shrink thereby changing the prior theoretical results which assumed that the population size remains constant. The motivation for figuring out the role of a changing N is that the most common laboratory evolution experiments have a population going through periodic growth and dilution cycles. Therefore, we would like to generalize our theory so we can use it to analyze this kind of experimental data.

Paul Rutherford with Prof. Shulei Zhang

Nonlinear Transport in Chiral Tellurium

Chiral molecules are of great interest because of their asymmetry along the chiral axis. This asymmetry leads to many interesting electronic properties due to symmetry breaking. For my project, I will be examining nonlinear transport phenomenon in chiral tellurium crystals. I will be using a model Hamiltonian to investigate the nonlinear conductivity with the presence of a magnetic field in multiple directions. More specifically, I will be modeling the quantum metric dipole contribution, which is zeroth order in relaxation time, making it an intrinsic effect unlike the Berry curvature or the Drude weight. By applying newly understood effects (quantum metric) to this system, I hope to uncover novel physics in the realm of chiral nonlinear transport.

Chiyu Zhou with Prof. Glenn Starkman

Dark matter is a form of matter that does not emit, absorb, or reflect light, yet it exerts gravitational effects that shape the motion of stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters. Physicists introduced it to explain phenomena such as flat galaxy rotation curves, gravitational lensing, and the large-scale structure of the universe that cannot be accounted for by visible matter alone.There are some guesses of the candidates of dark matter, such as weak interactive massive particles, axion, etc. There are also other candidates of dark matter that are potentially much more massive, these includes chunks of nuclear matter and primordial black hole. My topic is to discuss the gravitational effect on the orbits of solar system bodies when one or several of these massive dark matter candidates pass by. These candidates’s mass can be up to 1020 kg so that it can potentially influence the orbit of solar system bodies — planets, moons, asteroids, comets, etc.. At the same time, their size could be small enough for us not to observe them visually.