Mr. Ting Zhu (ESM doctoral student) gave an oral presentation titled "Device Optimization and Surface Morphology Investigation of NIR Light Harvesting PbSe Nanocrystal-Polymer Hybrid Photovoltaic Cells" in the
B7 Symposium "Nanomaterials for Energy Conversion and Storage," and co-presented another talk titled "Formation of Ultra-Thin Nanodot Films by Mist Deposition" in the Symposium "Nanoscale One-Dimensional Electronic and Photonic Devices,"both of the 212th Meeting of the Electrochemical Society in Washington D.C., October 7-12, 2007. Mr. Zhu's PhD research is being supervised by Dr. Jian Xu.

Joby John, ESM doctoral student, presented a paper “Performance Variability and Inter-trial tasks Dynamics” (co-authored with Joseph Cusumano) at the 44th Annual Technical Meeting of the Society of Engineering Science, on the Texas A&M University campus, on October 21 - 24, 2007.

Engineering Science majors are required to conduct a capstone research and design project that integrates the scientific principles of research, design, and analysis and applies them to a particular field of engineering.

A list of students, their selected topics, thesis supervisor and more follows below.

Mr. Alexandre Likhanskii (ESM doctoral student) made an oral presentation titled "Investigation of asymmetric dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuator, driven by repetitive nanosecond pulses" and co-presented a poster titled "Schlieren observation of vortex flow structures in asymmetric dielectric barrier discharges" at the 60th Annual Gaseous Electronics Conference in Arlington, VA, October 2-5, 2007. Mr. Likhanskii's research is being supervised by Dr. Vlad Semak.

Engineering Science and Mechanics faculty hosted undergraduate students at a question and answer pizza party on Monday, October 15, 2007. "I am delighted with the numbers of excellent students who participated in the event", says Professor Christine Masters, Undergraduate Program Coordinator. If you were unable to attend the event and would like more information concerning an undergraduate degree in engineering science, please contact Professor Masters by e-mail at: cbm100@psu.edu.

Mr. Jinjie Shi (ESM, Ph.D student) is the first author of a paper that will appear in the November 2007 issue of Nanotechnology. Mr. Shi's paper, titled "Nanoporous polymeric transmission gratings for high-speed humidity sensing", was co-authored with Vincent K. S. Hsiao (Postdoctoral Scholar) and Tony Jun Huang (Assistant Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics).

Guneet Sethi, (engineering science and mechanics doctoral candidate) will present a paper titled “Structure and Dielectric Properties of Amorphous Tantalum Pentoxide Thin Film Capacitors”, at the 2007 IEEE Conference on Electrical Insulation and Dielectric Phenomena, to be held in
Vancouver, BC, Canada, October 14–17, 2007, The paper can be found in the program as oral paper 96.

Paper co-authors include Jennifer Sloppy, Matthew Olszta, Jing Li, Michael T. Lanagan and Mark W. Horn. Mr. Sethi is advised by Dr. Michael T. Lanagan.

Congratulations!

Engineering Science and Mechanics is pleased to annouce the Fall 2007 Undergraduate Classroom Teaching Interns. Mr. Abdalla Nassar is working with Professor Mirna Urquidi-Macdonald in the development of class notes for E MCH 13 (Strength of Materials). Mr. Kevin Graves will be holding office hours and making class presentations in EMch 110H (Equilibrium Mechanics) along with Professor Lawrence Friedman.

Congratulations to both students on their achievement!