Casey Bennett with Peter J. Thomas, Dept. of Mathematics, and David Friel, Dept. of NeurosciencesConsequences of random ion channel gating for irregularity of Purkinje cell firing patternsPurkinje cells (PC) are neurons located in the cerebellum, which are understood to play a fundamental role in motor control in humans and mice....
All projects
Alexander Cluff with John Ruhl
Creating an “on-sky” test environment for CMB detector arrays
Measuring Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation polarization anisotropies requires that detectors be held at extremely low temperatures (~.3K) in order to prevent noise. Cooling detectors to such temperatures in the laboratory is not a difficult task, but in...
Mason Eastman with Harsh Mathur
Conductors as a model for elliptical coffee stains
In electrostatics, conductors exhibit a number of interesting properties. Among these is the ‘lightning rod’ effect, whereby electric fields are significantly greater near areas of high curvature. In 1997, Nagel et al. published a paper likening the behavior...
Chris Emr with Paul Barnhart, Dept. of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering
Observing lake Erie algae blooms via hyper spectral imaging on CubeSat
The goal of this project is to develop a miniaturized multi/hyper-spectral imaging instrument that could be integrated within a CubeSat to provide orbital observations of Lake Erie algae blooms in late summers....
Jonathon Frey with Cory Christensen and Ken Singer
Photobleaching of fluorescent dyes in polymer films
Recently, optical data storage has been achieved via photobleaching of a fluorescent dye in co-extruded, multilayer, polymer films. Photobleaching, the decrease in fluorescence by exposure to light, can be caused by a number of different processes,...
Neel Lynn Giltinan with Gary Chottiner
Computer Controlled Temperature Programmed Desorption from Noble Metal Surfaces
Temperature Programmed Desorption (TPD) provides insight that no other spectroscopy can give into the interactions between molecules and the surfaces on which these molecules are adsorbed. TPD is performed in an ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) environment, ~...
Emily Griffin with Ken Singer
Aluminum zinc oxide transparent conductors for optical cavity enhanced polymer photovoltaics
Indium tin oxide is the ubiquitous transparent conductor used in all liquid crystal displays and thin film photovoltaic devices. Indium, however, is a rare and relatively expensive material, leading to intense research to replace it...
Tadeas Liska with Jesse Berezovsky
Fabrication and characterization of integrated optical cavities for enhanced spin measurements
Spintronics is an emerging field with numerous applications including quantum computing of which a key component is the ability to monitor the spin-state of a system. Such monitoring can be achieved optically using spin-photon interactions...
Jacob Marx with Xuan Gao
The epitaxial growth of topological insulator thin films using chemical vapor deposition
Topological insulators are a class of quantum materials with metallic surface states existing inside the bulk band gap. Current method of producing thin films of topological insulator is mainly based on molecular beam epitaxy. The...
Corey Mason with Jesse BerezovskyMapping interactions in hybrid systems with active scanning probesNanosystems have large potential in many future applications, but constructing these systems can be difficult or imprecise. In order to circumvent the difficulties and imprecision, we plan to fabricate the components needed for the nanosystem separately: one...