PAMS students bring research to Las Vegas - Physics, Astronomy, and Materials Science Blog

The American Physical Society (APS) hosted its March meeting March 5-10 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

A group of Missouri State students in different physics, astronomy and materials science (PAMS) disciplines were in attendance, and some presented their research.

August Schwoebel

From Belleville, Illinois, Schwoebel is a dual chemistry and physics major with an emphasis in materials physics. He is also pursuing mathematics and computer science minors and an undergraduate computational science certificate.

Schwoebel’s primary research interest is in experimental condensed matter. He is advised by Dr. Tiglet Besara, assistant professor of PAMS.

His project is titled “Investigation of Novel Quantum Materials Using p-Block Fluxes”.

“The focus of my research is to try and explore the growth of new semiconducting intermetallic compounds,” Schwoebel said. “These are materials composed only of metals that exhibit electrical properties. This makes them useful in almost every sector of electronics.”

Schwoebel must grow these materials himself, but the results are well worth the effort.
“Once materials have been grown, we can determine whether they are new by using a combination of energy dispersion spectroscopy and x-ray diffraction for their compositions and structures respectively,” he said. “These materials can be further tested for their semiconducting behaviors using UV-Visible spectroscopy and I-V curve tracing.”

He has been a part of this research effort since August 2022 and is working on a new and unique family of materials.

“I am currently working on analyzing materials called inorganic clathrates, in which a lattice (or ‘cage’) of atoms traps another set of molecules within it,” Schwoebel said. “It’s all very fun work, and I hope to have some interesting results to share before graduation.”

Aziz Octoviawan

From Jakarta, Indonesia, Octoviawan is pursuing his master’s in materials science while conducting research in materials modeling and computational materials science.

“Under the supervision of Dr. Ridwan Sakidja [professor of PAMS], I developed computational modeling to investigate materials for extreme environments, like for the body of hypersonic vehicles and re-entry spacecraft,” Octoviawan said. “My work is based on the first principle calculation and uses artificial intelligence to scale the calculation. By running the model from our computer, we can understand the material’s behavior at ultra-high temperatures around 2,000 degrees Celsius.”

This project is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Computational Supercomputer Allocation from the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), which is run by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Ummay Honey

From Bangladesh, Honey is working on her master’s in materials science with her research focused on nanotechnology and biomaterials.

Her project is titled “Defect states study and surface patching in Zinc Oxide nanostructures via nano-bio interaction with DNA bases”. She is advised by Dr. Kartik Ghosh, distinguished professor of PAMS.

“I am currently doing nano-bio interaction research,” Honey said. “A biophysiochemical reaction takes place in the surface of nanomaterials and biomaterials, so we need to know their interface and how they react to each other for the improvement of biomedical devices.

Marium Mostafiz Mou

From Bangladesh, Mou is pursuing her master’s in materials science with an interest in computational materials science.

Her project is titled “Machine learning strategies for potential development in high-entropy driven nickel-based superalloys”. She is advised by Sakidja.

“My thesis is related to using artificial intelligence to predict forcefield and design materials for advanced turbine engines,” Mou said.

This project was made possible by a grant from the National Energy Technology Laboratory and The Department of Energy (DOE)’s Visiting Faculty Program (VFP).

Attending the conference gave Mou great connection opportunities.

“Conferences like APS are a great way to meet with researchers who thrive for knowledge,” Mou said. “I met with the inventors whose code I use for my research, which was very exciting and thrilling for me. I also met others who are also working with AI and got to know their opinions. It was a great learning experience for me.”

Other students who attended or presented