REU Project List
Advisor: Professor Jon Thaler
Project Title: Observational Cosmology
Description:
The Dark Energy Survey (DES) will map 1/4 of the southern sky to measure the properties of dark matter and dark energy. These
mysterious entities comprise about 96% of the energy in the universe, but their properties are poorly known. We will study them by observing the
galaxies, quasars, and supernovas that have existed over the past nine billion years (2/3 of the time since the big bang).
The DES involves the construction of a 500 megapixel digital camera for a 4-meter telescope in Chile. It also involves the development of improved data analysis techniques. Work on the data acquisition hardware and software and work on algorithm development for science analysis (for example, measuring cosmological parameters with supernovas) are both suitable for an REU project.
Here are two web sites:
DES web site at Fermilab: https://www.darkenergysurvey.org/
The LSST web site (http://www.lsst.org/lsst) I also participate in LSST, a logger term, more ambitious project with similar science goals as DES.
Qualifications:
No particular course requirements. No prior astronomy is needed.
Some programming experience is desirable, but not necessary.
Some electronics experience is desirable, but not necessary.
Advisor: Professor Laura Greene
Project Title: Point Contact Andreev Reflection Tunneling Spectroscopy of Novel Superconductors
We perform point contact Andreev reflection tunneling spectroscopy (PCARTS) for studying the electronic structure of novel superconductors above and below the superconducting critical temperature. In these experiments, the conductance measured between a nanoscale tip and sample surface reveal the density of states, which is vital information for determining the mechanism for superconductivity. We study a variety of materials (including heavy-fermion and high-temperature superconductors) at temperatures down to 400 mK and applied magnetic fields up to 9 Tesla. We investigate superconducting order parameter symmetry and, in general, electronic transport at unconventional superconductors interfaces with normal, superconducting, and ferromagnetic tips.
The REU project entails the manufacture the nanoscale tips using electrochemical techniques, polishing single-crystal superconductors with mechanical and chemical techniques, materials microanalysis to observe tip and surface quality, some film growth and aiding in the cryogenic measurements. The student will gain an education in materials physics, cryogenic electronic transport, superconductivity, and unconventional superconductivity.
Qualifications: Enthusiasm
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Advisor: Professor George Gollin
Project Title: Calibrating the Mu2e Haystack: How to Recognize the Needle Therein
I am a new member of the Mu2e collaboration, an experiment proposed to search for the neutrinoless transitions of muons into electrons as the muons orbit Aluminum nuclei inside a thin target. This process is absolutely forbidden by the "Standard Model" so observation of it would shed some light on the nature of what's really "under the hood": we know that ordinary matter and the ordinary interactions described by the Standard Model account for less than five per cent of what's going on in our universe. The experimental challenge is proving that we understand the apparatus well enough to distinguish a tiny signal from the large backgrounds. The Illinois group is beginning to model a novel technique for demonstrating that we actually can sort out the signal from the background, using a calibration linac. It's an entirely new, home-grown approach invented at Illinois and it just might work. We will be spending the summer developing the computer simulations to see if it'll actually do what we need it to do.
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Advisor: Professor Alek Aksimentiev
Project Title: Electrostatic Fingerprint of DNA in a Nanopore Capacitor.
A fast and affordable method for sequencing human genomes is one of the most anticipated technological advances (http://genomics.xprize.org/). An interdisciplinary group of researchers at the University of Illinois is developing a nanopore electric circuit for deciphering the sequence of a DNA molecule by recognizing its electrostatic fingerprint. Through a set of computational experiments, the feasibility of this approach to decipher the sequence of a DNA double helix will be determined. In particular, this project aims to determine the relationship between the sequence of a DNA double helix and the electrostatic potential it induces in a nanopore capacitor
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Advisor: Gary Gladding
Project Title: Physics Education Research
Participants will have the opportunity to work in the Physics Education Research Group. Current topics range from cognitive studies of learning and problem solving to development and evaluation of web-based materials designed to improve teaching and learning. Our current major development project features assessment of multimedia learning modules we have recently introduced into the calculus-based introductory physics course.
Qualifications:Participants must have a good understanding of the concepts and problems in the introductory physics sequence. An interest in physics education is essential. General computing experience (programming, spreadsheets, HTML,..) will be very helpful.
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Advisors: Professor Nigel Goldenfeld (Physics) &
Gustavo Gioia (MechSE)
Project Title: Fluid Turbulence as a Critical Phenomenon
Background: Even though most of the flows that surround us in everyday life are turbulent flows over rough surfaces, such flows remain among the least understood phenomena in classical physics. Recent theoretical research into turbulent friction in pipes with rough walls (think of an oil pipeline) indicates that in turbulence, just as in phase transitions (think of the spontaneous magnetization of matter), there exists a close connection between small-scale statistics (e.g., the spectrum of turbulent energy in the flow) and large-scale phenomena (e.g., the turbulent friction). We are a group of 2 faculty, a postdoc, and several graduate students from physics and engineering who have been researching the relation between turbulence and phase transitions by means of theory, experiments, and computer simulations.
Description: If you join us, you will spend a summer performing turbulence measurements in our laboratory, in close collaboration with a graduate student. We will assign to you a specific project that is doable within the time frame of the REU program, and should result in a publication or at least a contribution to a publication. Both PIs have experience in the past with REU students and the students concerned got a lot of benefit from the experience. In addition you will participate in our weekly group meetings (which we believe are a lot of fun), and learn all you have to know to become an active member of our group. Our work is conducted in collaboration with an experimental group at the University of Pittsburgh, with whom we videoconference weekly.
References: You can read about our work in these publications:
Nigel Goldenfeld. Roughness-induced criticality in a turbulent flow. Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 044503:1-4 (2006). http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.044503
G. Gioia and P. Chakraborty. Turbulent friction in rough pipes and the energy spectrum of the phenomenological theory. Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 044502:1-4 (2006). http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.044502
N. Guttenberg and Nigel Goldenfeld. The friction factor of two-dimensional rough-pipe turbulent flows. Preprint available at http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.1451
Pre-requisites: You do not need to have any previous knowledge about turbulence, although it would be very helpful, but you need to be very curious, and prepared to think outside the box.
Background reading:We recommend the following books:
1: Elementary Fluid Dynamics by D.J. Acheson. Good general introduction to fluids especially suitable for physicists.
2: Turbulent Flows by S. Pope. Good introduction to basic concepts in turbulence.
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Advisor: Professor Matthias Grosse Perdekamp
Project Title: REU project in the PHENIX group at Illinois
PHENIX is a large nuclear physics detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. We study the collisions of heavy ions, for example gold ions, to create energy densities as present in the early universe, about 10 micro seconds after the big bang. In addition we study the collisions of polarized protons to learn about the quark and gluon sub-structure of the proton.
The PHENIX group at Illinois is building fast detectors for ionizing particle radiation. Our present focus is on so-called Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs). RPCs combine the ability of good timing measurements and position measurements. Our RPCs will be used in an upgrade of the PHENIX experiment that aims to study proton structure through events in which a quark and anti-quarks annihilate to form W-bosons. The RPCs will enable PHENIX to detect proton-proton collisions with Ws, to filter these events out and to store them for further offline analysis. Currently, we are working in our detector laboratory in Urbana to improve the performance of RPC detectors in the presence of high levels of radiation background. Summer projects include the development of materials as surface coating in RPCs and experimental tests of the rate capability performance of different RPC prototypes.
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Advisor: Professor Taekjip Ha
Project Title: Engineering a Helicase Mutant That Moves Backward on DNA
All molecular movement involves “motor proteins”, proteins that use chemical energy to make conformation changes that move them systematically along a surface of some other molecule. An example is the movement of myosin along actin, which is the basis of muscle contraction. This project concerns helicases, proteins that motor along single stranded DNA. Because they are the smallest motor proteins and their crystal structures are known, they offer an excellent opportunity to more fully understand the dynamics of motor proteins. In this project, we will use standard molecular biology methods to make mutants of a helicase and then we will observe the movement of these mutants using our unique expertise at obtaining optical measurements from single molecules. Finally, we will attempt to simulate the structural changes in the helicase using advanced computer methods called molecular dynamics.
We envision multiple undergraduate students will participate in various phases of the project and the project and its findings will be published in a peer-reviewed journal. While the best known function of a helicase is to unwind DNA (or RNA), many helicases also move directionally on single-stranded DNA which has two ends (3’ and 5’). Even highly related helicases can have opposite translocation directions and a big mystery remains to be the origin of directionality. These helicases represent the smallest motor proteins and the available high-resolution structures bound to the track DNA, may allow us to understand the microscopic mechanism of translocation for the first time for any molecular motor.
Undergraduate students will choose a single residue or a few residues of PcrA helicase mutants based on the bioinformatics and structural analysis, and will perform, under supervision by Ha’s students and postdocs, site-directed mutagenesis, sequencing to verify mutation, mutant purification, and single molecule fluorescence analysis of DNA translocation. The Ha lab is equipment with the state-of-the-art instruments that provide a simple but powerful method to determine the translocation direction and speed at the single molecule level. If there is an alteration in the translocation properties, REU students can use computational resources of Illinois to investigate the structural basis of the mutations. The students will have a choice to perform the similar work on human disease helicases such as BLM which is mutated in Bloom syndrome that is known to increase propensity to cancer of all types. A successful engineering of a reversal mutant will have a major transformative impact on our understanding of motor protein function.