May 6, 2010

Annual reports from years 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Chicago students in Chile June-December 2009

Six Chicago students accepted internships in Chile for 2009.  

student	institution	supervisor(s)	topic
Vanessa Acon	UCHILE	Prof. Cerda	Designing optimal scoring of a plastic sheet to guide tearing path.
Richard Bowers	USACH	Prof. Melo	Sound propagation in a bag of Hertzian-contact spheres
Alexander  Brandt	UCHILE	Prof. Mujica	Ultrasonic probes of dynamic elasticity in strained aluminum.
Marguerite Brown	USACH	Prof. Melo	Design of microphone for use at low pressure to model acoustic geological phenomena.
Scott Waitukaitis	UCHILE	Prof. Mujica	Determining wavevector decomposition in shaken granular layers near amophous-crystal transition
Justin Walker	USACH	Prof. Denardin	Effect of array geometry on magnetization response of ferromagnetic nanorod arrays to applied field.

• All these students were undergraduates except Scott W.  Scott is a PhD student working under Prof. Jaeger.  Scott initiated an ongoing collaboration between Prof. Jaeger's group and Prof. Mujica's group at UCHILE, as described below.
  

  Results from Chicago-to-Chile program 2009

• The supervisors of these students all gave their impressions to either the Chicago or Chile co-ordinator.  Three of the six students got high praise for the value they brought to the labs.  All were viewed as satisfactory.  The students also expressed satisfaction in a debriefing meeting held October 9 2009.  One said it was the experience of a lifetime.  Another said it confirmed his desire to study condensed matter physics.  Several praised their supervision and the warm atmosphere of their research group.  All gave a clear account of their projects.  One said that his work was too decoupled from science and lacked scientific supervision.  At least two of these projects are expected to lead to publications co-authored by the interns, but no papers have appeared to date.
• The students seemed pleased and satisfied with the broader aspects of their visit.  All found suitable housing, e. g. in furnished apartments organized for foreign students.  Most took time to make side trips outside Santiago. 
  
• All the students participated in English language sessions with Chilean students who had expressed interested in being interns in Chicago.  Most spent about 3 hours in these sessions.  Their main purpose was evaluation.  After the English sessions Prof. Cerda asked which Chilean students had adequate English to work in a Chicago lab.   The Chicago students felt that this work was modestly useful and not a burden.  Prof. Cerda plans to use the English sessions in this way in summer 2010.

Chileans in Chicago: January-March 2010

We received seven students from Chile this year, identified in the table below. As before, each student was introduced to their prospective supervisor last autumn via a video meeting, and an agreement was reached on a project. Each student made good progress on a project and several supervisors found their work beneficial to the group's research. 

student	institution	year*	supervisor(s)**	project
Gustavo Castillo	UCHILE	6+	Waitukaitis, Prof. Jaeger	Charge-induced clustering in a falling granular stream.
Sebastian Céspedes	UCHILE	4	Leahy, Dr. Lin	Buckling and tearing of metal nanoparticle monolayers
Tiaren Garcia	USACH	5	Prof. Guyot-Sionnest	Magnetoconductance of nanocrystals stacked in nanopores
Francisco Martinez	USACH	5	Soderberg, Prof. Chin	Creating a laser beam position controller
Rubén Meza	USACH	6	Holten-Anderson, Prof. Lee	Creating calibrated gels for wrinkling studies
Tania Sauma	UCHILE	4	Prof. Witten	Profile of a fluid meniscus during scissoring a drop in two.
Franco Tapia	USACH	6+	Brown, Prof. Jaeger	Viscoelasticity and rheology of dense suspensions.

* 4 means 4th year undergrad, 5 means first year grad.
** first name listed is the grad student or postdoc immediately supervising the intern

The students and their projects are described in more detail here.  Most students presented their work at group meetings and wrote a final report on their projects.  Gustavo Castillo continued a collaboration begun the previous June in Chile with Scott Waitukaitis.  Ruben Meza's successful work led to an offer from his research group to return to Chicago on separate funding during the coming year.

 In a debriefing session on March 11 and by email the students expressed strong gratitude and satisfaction with their internships.  Likewise, each of the seven Chicago advisors found ways that the intern benefited their research.  In one case a return visit is planned so the student can continue the project that was started here, as noted above.  In another case the intern was called one of the most mature and effective students in the group.  In a third case the supervisor said "It is a tremendous help for us to have him blaze the trail for us on this new experiment."  However, one internship was hampered by lack of communication before the intern arrived.  Here the intern failed to respond to the advisor's email about the project.  In another case a new supervisor had to be found early in the internship because of a perceived lack of supervision.  This was likely the result of an overall disruption in the original research group.  Corrective action for future years doesn't seem necessary.


Changes and lessons learned

• Number of interns.  We accepted seven interns even though only six per year are funded by the grant.  We expect year to year fluctuations in the number of interns.  In this case the high number did not lead to a reduced student quality or quality of placements.  If the pace of internships continues higher than budgeted, we're prepared to terminate the program early or ask for supplementary funding. 
  
• Student preparation, administrative difficulties.  This year we encountered no serious language problems, and administrative arrangements went quite smoothly.
• Communication before arrival.   As noted above, one Chilean intern was handicapped by not communicating with their advisor prior to arriving in Chicago.  Starting with the June-September Chicago students we made special efforts to verify that after accepting each other, the intern and supervisor had exchanged emails in both directions.  At this writing only one communication in one direction remained to be done. 
  

Faculty visits

Chicagoans in Chile, June-December 2010

Twelve Chicago undergraduates wrote extended letters of application for internships.  This is distinctly larger than any previous year.  The seven chosen students will leave for their internships in early July.  The students and their Chilean supervisors are as follows.

name	year	supervisor	probable topic
Michael Baumer	2	Prof. Mujica	Nonlinear oscillation mode in couette flow
David Blair	1	Prof. Bernal	Optimimising micron scale indenter imaging rheometer
Kyle  Felker	1	Prof. Soto	Transient relaxation of mobile layer in numerical granular fluid in chute flow
Trent German	3	Prof. Raul Cordero	Mechanics of fruit cuticle layer measured by speckle interferometry.
Ned Lieb	1	Prof. Paez	AFM nanoindenter measurements of corrosion-protecting composite coatings.
Nikita Nangia	1	Prof. Hamm	Optimal perforation pattern for tearing a sheet

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• Recruiting events. In addition to publicity via posters and classroom announcements, the program organized two information meetings. In January Prof. Witten spoke to the local chapter of the Society of Physics Students to tell them about the program. In February the program organized an information reception as noted above.

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