Collaborative Scientific Work

Working under lead author Nishithan Kani, I worked on characterizing and imaging cobalt oxide nanoclusters on graphene, used for the electrochemical reduction of nitrates with an extremely high selectivity for ammonia. Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) experiments were conducted to better understand the structure of the material and the cobalt oxide. This work was reported in Advanced Energy Materials.

In collaboration with lead author Jeremy Wang, as well as Caroline Harms and John Hegarty, two other members of my lab group, we worked to understand a process by which polyelectrolyte complexes sequester nanoplastic contaminants in water. I also worked to test the adsorption of lead to the nanoplastics to observe the process by which nanoplastics, during the polyelectrolyte complex sequestration process, can also pull out other contaminants from water with them. This work was published in ACS Langmuir.

Other research projects that I have worked on over the years:

• Molecular dynamics (MD) and density functional theory (DFT) simulations of titanium dioxide, coupled with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) image simulations, to better understand structure around oxygen vacancies as viewed in TEM imaging. Please do not judge my undergraduate honors thesis on this subject, I was very young.
• Testing manganese oxide nanomaterials for their utility in recovering cobalt and nickel from aqueous sources such as waste site runoff or mine tailings.
• Making a bunch of ionic liquid dilutions and observing how the viscosity, conductivity, and thermal properties of the resultant mixtures changed due to molecular ordering with an inflection point at a 1:1 molar ratio.
• Adding glass waste to concrete to optimize additively-manufactureable concrete blends and utilize windshield waste.