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Name: Mordechai Rorvig 1. List and describe the research projects you have worked on as an undergraduate. First I worked with Dr. Liechti in the aerospace department in experimental mechanics research. The project I worked on dealt with measuring the adhesive properties of special surface materials called self assembled monolayers. I worked in this lab for a year. I started off spending most of my time reading things that Dr. Liechti assigned to me. After I learned a bit about things, we spent some time designing a new kind of adhesion measurement device. Then, during the academic year, I focused on building, running and characterizing samples with a technique called X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy. I had a great time there and I learned a lot. I decided I wanted to try something different. I worked for one summer at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the general area of hypervelocity projectile design. I can’t really speak of the details of my work, as there’s a lot of secrecy associated with these kinds of projects. Basically, I did a lot of analysis and ran a lot of computational experiments. I found all the analysis and simulation duties were not as much fun and not as challenging as I would have liked. It was still a great experience, and it was interesting to see what life was like in a more corporate environment. Right now I am currently working under Dr. Demkowicz of the aerospace engineering department. Again, since the project is for a corporation, I can’t really go into much detail. The research deals with structural dynamics. There is a structure that vibrates a lot and we’re trying to understand these vibrations. First, a MATLAB model was made and effort was spent trying to figure out the properties of the materials involved. This research is ongoing and a lot of progress still needs to be made. It’s not an easy problem. Eventually, we hope to have a computer model that accurately predicts the behavior of the actual physical structure. Being able to run experiments on the computer is really beneficial since it saves a lot of money. This computational model design is what I find extremely interesting. It’s pretty amazing to think that you can get the same results from the computer that you would get from a real life experiment. And you can really get these results. 2. How did you get your research position? Since I was interested in doing research as an undergraduate, I began by emailing most of the professors in my department. I just emailed all the professors whose work I found the most interesting. The email I sent out expressed my interest in their work and I received three or four replies. I went to go talk to them and decided on working with Dr. Liechti. I didn’t get paid at first, but you can’t let that stop you because you have to start somewhere. It was a good experience, and I am able to be paid now. For the IAT position, it was a more traditional way of getting the job. I filled in an application, sent in my resume, went to go talk to the people and I wound up getting the job. Dr. Demkowicz, my favorite professor thus far, taught my dynamics class. After finishing the class, I emailed him saying I was interested in working with him and asked him if he had a position available. You really just need to show professors your enthusiasm, express your interest, and don’t be discouraged if you get rejected. There are a lot of different things to be interested in, and a lot of different professors to contact! 3. Approximately how many hours a week do you spend researching? In the summer with Dr. Liechti, I worked 10-20 hours a week and during the school year, I worked 5-10 hours a week. I worked full time (40 hours a week) at the internship for the IAT. Now with Dr. Demkowicz, I work 5-10 hours a week. During the school semester, professors understand that undergraduates are very busy and they seem to be very understanding when it comes to how much you work from week to week 4. What is the most challenging aspect of being an undergraduate researcher? The biggest challenge of research is the need to constantly learn new things, apply those new things right away, while simultaneously keeping the big picture in mind. With Dr. Demkowicz right now, I’m learning a lot about dynamic vibrations and wave propagation, which are graduate level subjects. There’s a lot of theory involved. You have to be able to swallow all this knowledge to do research and to be able to come up with good conclusions. Remember that in research, you’re always dealing with things you don’t know. 5. What advice would you give to an undergraduate interested in research? My advice is to get involved. Contact your professors, especially if you’re really interested in their class. If you show enthusiasm, getting a research position should be pretty easy. You may not get paid at first, but don’t let that stop you. Try and look around at a lot of different research areas. One of my goals as an undergraduate has been to try to get my feet wet in as many different areas as possible. If you’re interested in graduate school, you’ll be much better off if you can find a technical area that you truly love. Figuring this out is not a simple task. You need to work in different areas to find out what you like and don’t like. I have found that I like the more computational stuff and I might not have figured that out without my research experiences. |