Undergraduate Research
Students who are interested in obtaining an undergraduate research assistantship (RA) must speak to individual professors about openings in their research groups. Students may work in a professor’s research group for credit either as a technical elective (up to a maximum of 3 hours) or as a free elective. Students may be paid an hourly wage for their work as an undergraduate RA.
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Student Experience
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I have worked as an undergrad research assistant for about a year in the Paul Braun group. I have been working on infilling porous silicon structures with polymers for various applications. The first project that I worked on was to be used as an inversion template for high performance optical materials. Using porous silicon allows us to control the index of refraction of the structure based on the level of porosity. Polymers tested for the optical materials included polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) and polystyrene. Currently I am working on infilling with a biopolymer to be used in bioreabsorbable devices. I am studying the mechanical properties of the silicon biopolymer composite as well as dissolution kinetics.
-Tara Cullerton,
MatSE Undergraduate Student