Sunday, June 5, 2022
By:
I am writing this only a few hours after having come to Washington D.C. and the George Washington campus, with most of my belongings still in my luggage. Travelling for the last day and half has been quite demanding, not only because of the (multiple) delayed flights and long wait times, but also because I needed to prepare and be ready for my first day on the National Institute of Standards and Technology campus tomorrow.
I spent the first week of the internship working remotely while completing an extended study called “In The Footsteps of Galileo”. The last month for me has involved going to multiple places in Italy - places where the astronomer, physicist and philosopher Galileo Galilei taught, researched, and became the father of observational astronomy and the scientific method. We visited the places where the moons of Jupiter were first observed, where the first modern theories on mechanics and falling bodies were tested, and where the heliocentric model of the universe first gained popularity. This extended study, while not directly related to the work I will be doing this summer, has been transformative in terms of how I think about research, the importance of the search for truth, and the role that the scientific method plays in this all-important endeavor.
While spending the past week in Venice, I started working on some of the research I will be doing this summer, which involved reading and summarizing a few long review papers on the physical basis behind photoelectron emission microscopy or PEEM. This summer I will be modifying the sample holder used for this microscopy to be able to image the influence of applied electrostatic potential to a sample with a high enough resolution. To do this, I have also been watching tutorials on Autodesk, which is the software I will be using to design the 3D models for the sample holder. This work will involve looking at the theory behind electronic transitions, building models based on that, and a lot of testing to get the desired improvements.
This work has many commonalities with the research I have been doing at Colgate University as well, which has involved forming composites and testing their material properties through various spectroscopic and electronic techniques. In fact, the techniques behind PEEM could be directly applied to similar projects in order to better understand and explain the theoretical bases behind charge transport in novel materials. I look forward to seeing some of the instruments I will be working with and meeting my advisor Dr. Sujitra Pookpanratana tomorrow.
I would also like to thank Mikayla, Kayla and Brad for helping me with everything so far, and setting up a hybrid orientation so I could attend it remotely. I have not yet met most of the other interns, but I look forward to getting to know everyone over the next week and exploring the city and campus around me. Tonight, however, I look forward to getting some rest.
Divyansh Chamria