We recover, refine, and sell valuable resources from wastewater, seawater, and biological waste to kickstart a circular economy.

The Stanford Impact Founder (SIF) Fellowship provides funding along with advising support to Fellows who want to start a high-impact for-profit or nonprofit venture to address a pressing social or environmental need. https://ecopreneurship.stanford.edu/sif-eco-fellows-2024/

Lab of Dr. William Tarpeh. I designed materials for selective nitrogen recovery from wastewater.

I worked as an unpaid research assistant in the lab of Dr. Amy Peterson in WPI's chemical engineering department since my freshman spring. My first project was to help a graduate student study thermal transitions in the viscoelastic behavior of polyelectrolytes as a function of their humidity histories. For these materials, I compared the elastic modulus and water storage of samples stored in ambient and humidity-controlled environments through dynamic mechanical analysis and thermogravimetric analysis. I am co-authored on a paper regarding this subject with Dr. Peterson that has been published in the Journal of Polymer Science, Part B: Polymer Physics.For my second project, I studied the relationship between physical and coulombic interactions between layers and macromolecular diffusion properties in polyelectrolyte multilayers (PEMs). To do this, I used DMA data to determine ionic bond density of PEMs. I then ran a release study to measure the time it took a fluorescently tagged polymer to diffuse through different PEMs. I had no graduate student this time; Dr. Peterson herself gave me suggestions for experiments.My final research in this lab, my senior thesis, involved the usability of inorganic nanowire-modified polyelectrolyte complexes (PECs) as ion-exchange membranes (IEMs) for vanadium flow batteries (VFBs). This is the project where I have had the most responsibility. I was fully in charge of defining project goals, necessary experiments, expected outcomes, and contingency plans.

I served as a research assistant to a postdoc in the lab of Dr. Bradley Olsen in MIT's chemical engineering department. While I completed most necessary experiments on my own, I spoke to this postdoc every day about recent data, the direction of our project, and troubleshooting. I was responsible for using bacterial transformation to produce and purify iterations of green fluorescent protein with different charge distributions. I then ran RAFT polymerization reactions to synthesize polyanions, polycations, and neutral polymers. I characterized these materials using SDS gel electrophoresis, liquid chromatography/mass spectroscopy, gel permeation spectroscopy, and NMR spectroscopy. Finally, I ran turbidity measurements to investigate how protein charge distribution affected interactions between these proteins and polymers in aqueous solutions. I presented this work at the MIT Amgen Scholar poster session at the end of the summer. I also attended the Amgen Symposium at UCLA, where I networked with professors and other scholars.

My responsibilities were similar to my work as an Amgen Scholar. I served as a research assistant to a graduate student in the lab of Dr. Lia Krusin-Elbaum in CCNY’s physics department. While I completed most necessary experiments on my own, I spoke to this graduate student every day about recent data, the direction of our project, and troubleshooting. I applied gating to a ternary topological insulator called Bismuth Telluride Selenide. I then measured longitudinal and Hall resistivity, bulk charge carrier densities, charge mobility, and Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations at temperatures down to 1.9K, magnetic field strengths up to 14 T, and gate voltages up to 100 V. Consequently, I investigated the effects of electrostatic gating on multiple conduction properties. I presented this work at the Columbia MRSEC poster session at the end of the summer. I then presented this work at Stanford's undergraduate research conference and the MRS 2017 Spring conference.

In the manufacturing section of Siemens’ Walpole Site, six different machines fill and seal medical packs with blood diagnostic chemicals in assembly line fashion. As in intern after my senior year of high school, I led research that involved designing a new method to test if sealed packs had leaks. Their old method was reliable, but it was too slow for a new machine line design that they were proposing. I tested packs under vacuum conditions to see how sealed packs expanded compared to packs with clear leaks. The goal was to have a laser sensor detect the contraction of leaking packs as internal pressure was released. However, sensor data revealed that packs usually expanded irreversibly due to the malleability of the pack plastic, and this was indistinguishable from the expansion of sealed packs. I presented this to the head of engineering and proposed research into alternate solutions.