Thesis Defense, Image-J/Excel and Group Meeting

We started the day by going to a thesis defense. Richard Woudenberg presented Anhydrous Proton Conducting Materials for Use in High Temperature Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells. As I understood it, he works for the Marken corporation and was given time and support to get his PhD. He talked about developing materials that did not require water, anhydrous, to function. He mentioned work on polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. Some of the other stuff he mentioned was a bit over my head. But I need to say, it was very interesting to see someone going through this process and seeing what they had to do.

After that, we went to the Russell Group computer room and started analyzing the pictures from the wrinkling. We opened up the pictures using Image-J to get the pixel areas of the whole film, of the water drop, of the wrinkles, of the water drop again, the zoomed in picture, and the number of wrinkles. Once we had the areas, we used Origin or Excel to analyze the data to determine the diameter of the water droplets and the length of the wrinkles.

After lunch, we attended the group meeting for the Russell Group. These are the students, working on their PhD's, and post-docs working with Dr. Russell.

Other people that are not in this picture: Ji Xu - Sivakumar Nagarajan - Narupol Intasanta

During the meeting, which are usually held weekly, some of the individuals were called on to give a talk on an assigned published paper. The individual must describe what the experiment or idea is and give their opinion on it. Dr. Russell asks specific questions to either check what was on the paper or to force the individual to think what can be done with this information. Other individuals gave a presentation on the progress of their current research. Another experience into what is involved in attaining a PhD. Quite Fascinating.