Overview

This was my first job in research, as I wanted to see what it was like working in academia compared to industry. I was fortunate enough to actually be approached for this position (rather than applying) by former TA of mine that had completed his PhD. and needed some help. My focus was pretty singular, to complete the magnet apparatus he needed and the related simulations. I would summarize the work I did as follows:

• Designed and assembled a 3D magnetic field generator for testing novel Glioblastoma therapies using alternating magnetic fields generated from four pairs of magnetic tweezers.
• Conducted literature review on magneto-thermal relationships of iron nano-particles to guide in design decision making.
• Created multiple models in COMSOL Multi-Physics to predict electro-magneto-thermo-relationships used to forecast efficacy of treatments and sensitivity of the system.
• Improved magnetic field generator design to increase survey-able workspace by 50%

Extra Information

I began working a couple of weeks after my studies were finished so I could visit my family before starting work. I began by reading through several papers provided to me by my supervisor and then began drafting up designs for the 3D magnetic field generator he tasked me with. I did the vast majority of work from home, going into the lab only to take measurements or assemble the hardware. I finished my term about four months later when I left to visit family in Europe.

At the start of June, there was a one week IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) that was being organized by the head of our lab and was hosted virtually, so I attended some workshops related to my current project and also reminicent of the capstone I developed for the lab in my studies. This was my first time “attending” such a conference and it was really an interesting and informative experience, even when some of the material I was exposed to was nowhere near what I was familiar with, it still felt approachable and not alienating to be the dumbest guy in the room.

I also took a couple weeks to detour from my main project to help my supervisor prepare simulations for another project he was contributing to. This work was investigating how one could try to increase the permiability of the blood-brain-barrier (BBB) where tumors attached themselves to bloodvessels by applying directed pressures on the tumor. If the permiability of the BBB could be increased, the uptake of pharamceuticals would be improved. My simulations for this focused on seeing how the tangential and compressive force trends as the alignment of the force and the stack up of tumor components was varied.

From that point on my focus returned solely to completing the magnetic field generator until the end of my term mid-Spetember.