I work on theory and simulation of a novel class of materials called liquid crystal elastomers that function like artificial muscles. They can change length when you stimulate them by heating or cooling, by applying an electric or magnetic field, or by shining light on them.
With funding from the National Science Foundation, I'm trying to understand what controls the mechanical response of these materials, and to create modeling and simulation tools that will allow engineers to design new applications.
I worked in an area called percolation, which is intermediate between physics and math. Essentially, it is the geometry of connectivity.
For example, imagine taking a window screen, a square lattice of wires, and snipping the wires at random. When you've reached a high enough density of snipped bonds, the window screen will fall into pieces and it will no longer conduct electricity from one side to the other. But just before you break the last bond that makes it fall into pieces—at what you would call the percolation threshold—some very interesting things happen.
It turns out that by exploring such simple systems through a computer simulation, it is possible to learn about critical phenomena and phase transitions in real materials like water. So under the supervision of Professor Gene Stanley, I wrote computer code to perform simulations of a percolation model. I was a beginner at programming, but luckily I got plenty of help from graduate students and post-doctoral researchers in the group.
In the world of 1979, scientific computing was a real challenge. The memory in BU's IBM mainframe computer at that time was much smaller than what you'll find in your cell phone today! We ran our simulations overnight so that we didn't disrupt other users during the day.
I was planning to pursue a career in medicine. I knew that the study of science was important preparation for medical school. But as a result of the program, I decided that physics and chemistry were so exciting that I chose to pursue a science career instead.
Professor Stanley was so enthusiastic and encouraging that at the end of six weeks when my project wasn't completely finished, he helped me make arrangements to stay for the rest of the summer. He stands out as someone who knows how to motivate a student just beginning to do research. He used to literally jump up and down when I would bring him results. Together with grad student Jerry Shlifer, we produced a scientific publication before I even started college. Here's the citation:
My work with Professor Stanley ended up being absolutely formative, and it continued throughout my final year of high school, and even into my undergraduate and doctoral work at Harvard. I literally grew up in his research group. He has a real talent for creating a sense of community and generating excitement over science.
A summer research experience is the best way to know for sure if you want to make a career as a scientist. How do you find out if you have a real knack for scientific research? You have to try it out. In a program like this, you find out if research really rings your bell, and if your interest is intense enough to let you work really hard and accomplish something important.