James M
- Research Program Mentor
PhD at Northwestern University
Expertise
Materials Science & Engineering
Bio
I like taking exotic materials from the lab and making them practically useful in the "real world." My research focuses on thermoelectric materials, which are materials that can convert heat into electricity. Thermoelectrics are often used to produce power on space missions, and are currently powering NASA's new Mars rovers and the Voyager probes. Working with NASA, I hope to take some new, advanced thermoelec materials out of the lab and make them usable on future NASA missions! I live in Chicago, where I love going to concerts and biking up and down the lakefront. However, my real passion is the outdoors. Whenever I can, I prefer to be outside of the city, backpacking, camping, or snowboarding (ESPECIALLY snowboarding). I hope to eventually visit every national park in the US - I'm about halfway there!Project ideas
Phase diagram of coffee and different milks
In materials science, we like to mix different elements together and see what materials come out. If you record every material made as a function of elemental amounts, you can create a little map that shows people how much of each element is needed to create a specific material - almost like a recipe. These maps, called phase diagrams, are immensely useful for materials scientists. I have always been interested in the phase diagrams of simple components found in someone's kitchen. For example, how much milk can you add to coffee before the milk and coffee separates out to two different materials? How does this differ when you choose different percentage fats of cow milk? How about "alternative" milks? How does the temperature of the coffee affect the mixing? These very simple versions of phase diagrams can be interesting to the average person, without requiring the inaccessible/expensive equipment and high purity elements that most materials science researchers use in their labs. (image is a stock image taken from depositphotos.com)