Department of Materials Science and Engineering

 

Senior Thesis students undertake two semesters of intensive research under supervising faculty and graduate students, culminating in formal presentations of a research poster and a written senior thesis.  Their work is comparable to that of many of our graduate students and often results in published journal articles, many times as first author.

At graduation, the best senior thesis (based on the research effort, the scientific significance of the results, and the students' ability to communicate those results) is recognized with an award from the department. 

In 2009, there were two outstanding theses which shared this award:

• John Peloquin for his work on "Mechanical Properties of Calcite/Agarose Single Crystal Composites: A Model System for Biogenic Minerals" under Prof. Lara Estroff.
• Leo J. Small for his work on "Thin Films for Low-Temperature Solid Oxide Fuel Cells" under Prof. Bruce van Dover.

The department also recognizes the best poster presentations by the senior thesis students.  These awards are based on rankings by both faculty judges and the students themselves.  From a total of 17 posters in 4 areas, awards are made for the top three:

• (1st) Byungki Jung: "Crystallization of Amorphous Silicon by CO2 Laser Spike Annealing" under Prof. Mike Thompson
• (2nd) Neil Strom: "Synthesis of Colloidal CdTe Quantum Dots Yielding Sphere and Tetra-pod Geometries" under Prof. Frank Wise.
• (3rd) Samantha Smith: "Effect of Large Molecular Weight Block Copolymer Hybrids on Structure Formation" under Prof. Uli Wiesner.