ABSTRACTS for CLASS of 2026 SENIOR PROJECTS
as of February 7, 2025
These abstracts describe work that students PLAN to do in their projects; the abstracts for their final papers will generally be very different.
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.
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.