Undergraduate Researcher

I am engaged in methods to prepare protein crystal samples, inhibitor binding studies, and demonstrating how vibrations in lysozyme molecules change with inhibitor binding. * 2023 Celebration of Student Academic Excellence Student Showcase (See Activities link above)

Thin film processing of photoconductive antennas for THz generation • photolithography • thin film metallization • packaging on printed circuit board (PCB) • electrical and optical characterization in a THz micro-spectroscopy system Far-field terahertz and anisotropic terahertz microspectroscopy (ATM) • used THz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) • single crystal sucrose sample preparation • microspectroscopy of sucrose samples

Modeling of terahertz microscopy data.

Protein expression and purification

Prepared and monitored chemical solutions to grow liquid crystals for optical experimentation. Conducted microscopy studies and analyzed data to determine configurations for optimized crystal growth.

I worked on analysis scripts for molecular dynamics trajectories using VMD.

I am a senior undergraduate student fabricating and testing dynamic electrostatic alignment cells, which we hope to use to align proteins in solution.

As an electrical engineering undergraduate, I worked on optimizing protein crystal growth, characterization and storage for terahertz measurements.

Molecular crystal phonons