uc davis materials science engineering undergraduate research spotlight

Honors Program

Our Research Program for Standout Undergraduates

The Department of Chemical Engineering and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering offer a joint honors program to a select group of their undergraduate students. The program begins in the students’ second year, focuses on getting them research experience starting their third year and prepares them to produce an undergraduate thesis in their final year.

Research results are presented at the annual Undergraduate Research Conference at UC Davis. The research, thesis and presentation are prepared in consultation with a faculty member from the department. A list of students, projects and advisors for projects beginning in spring 2014 is shown below.

Participants in this program gratefully acknowledge the generous financial support of John and Gina Wasson.

For more information on the honors program, please contact one of our undergraduate advisors.

Student Advisor Project Year Completed
Alexandra Moskaluk McDonald Purification and Characterization of Newcastle Disease Virus’ Antigenic Protein, Hemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HN) 2014
Chris Guido Ristenpart A Solutal Fingering Instability during Capillary Imbibition in Fibrous Media 2014
Gil Benezer Dungan Analysis of Agarrose Sol-Gel Phase Behavior in the Presence of Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate 2014
Evan Forman Stroeve Tunable drug release from lipid bilayer coated superparamagnetic Fe₃O₄/mesoporous silica nanoparticles using PEO-PPO-PEO triblock copolymers 2014
Nicholas Talken Ristenpart Electrofluidic properties of colloidal particles 2014
David J. Bilsky Moulé DISC Patterning of Polymer Microstructures using Light Interference 2015
Zhimin Xie Schoenung Hazard and Life Cycle Assessment of Titanium Dioxide Nanoparticles when Applied as Antimicrobial Coatings in Textiles 2015
Cori Satkowski Faller Molecular Dynamics of Lipid Bilayer Morphology Modifications Induced by Hydroquinones 2015
Yang-Denis Su Phillips Diffusion in Carbopol Solutions and Gels 2015
Tony Ting Li Kuhl Wettability Comparison of Hydrophobic Surfaces 2015
Jillian Doherty Phillips Intrinsic Viscosity of Dilute Carbopol Solutions 2016
James Makel Stroeve Thermally and Chemically Responsive Nanoporous Materials for Efficient Capture of Fission Product Gases 2016
Xuan Mo Schoenung Microstructure and Thermal Stability of Nanocyrstalline AI Powders Produced by Cryomilling 2016
Lixian Huang Risbud Processing Induced Anomalous Superconductivity in Spark Plasma Sintered Bulk YBCO 2016
Allison Lo Stroeve Development and Functionization of Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery 2016
Bradley Petkus Stroeve Poly(n-isopropylacrylamide)-poly(ethylene) Glycol Co-Functionalized Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles for Improved, Thermoresponsive Protein Delivery 2016
Doniko Kingi Kuhl Zeta Potentials of Lipid Vesicles 2016
Yue Deng Longo Towards Enhanced Photochemical Water Splitting through Bacteriorhodopsin/TiO₂ Sol-gel Composite 2016
Kathryn Mains McDonald Purification of Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Via Ion Exchange Membrane Chromatography 2016
Ryan Kopa Mahajan Effect of Convolutional Neural Networks on Automating Materials Science Research 2017
Shayla Nikzad Block Use of Mass Balance in Determining Plant Water Status of Individual Wine Grape 2017
Robert Wu Kuhl Thermodynamics of Lipid Monolayers 2017
Benjamin Chang McDonald Optimizing the Extraction of Recombinant Butyrylcholinesterase from Transgenic Rice Cell Suspension Cultures 2018
Diego Docto Kuhl Zeta Potential of Vesicles in Ionic Solution 2018
Anjana Jayaraman Ristenpart Centrifugation Induced ATP Release from Red Blood Cells 2018
Wyatt Liao Longo Determining Ions’ Effects on Micelle Sizes 2018
Florence Rusly Castro Synthesis and Characterization of Porous Magnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles

2018

Justin Mulvery Moule Photothermal Projection Lithography: A new approach to patterning thin film organic seminconductors 2019
Peifen Lyu Takamura Antiferromagnetic Domain Patterns in Patterned La0.7Sr0.3FeO3 Thin Films 2019
Alice Fergerson Moule Sequential Doping of Organic Semiconducting Polymers 2020
Publications
Student Advisor Project Publication
Nicholas Talken Ristenpart Electrofluidic properties of colloidal particles Hexatic-to-Disorder Transition in Colloidal Crystals Near Electrodes: Rapid Annealing of Polycrystalline Domains
Zhimin Xie Schoenung Hazards of manufacturing of cosmetics Hazard and Life Cycle Assessment of Titanium Dioxide Nanoparticles when Applied as Antimicrobial Coatings in Textiles
Peifen Lyu Takamura Antiferromagnetic Domain Patterns in Patterned La0.7Sr0.3FeO3 Thin Films Controlling antiferromagnetic domains in patterned La0.7Sr0.3FeO3 thin films