Millennium Café

Maryam Tilton | Manogharan Group

With an expanding global population the demand for bone and joint reconstruction surgeries has increased. Unfortunately, in the case of significant bone trauma such as bone cancer and major fractures, modern implants are not always optimized and often result in postoperative complications which require additional surgery. This talk will highlight additive manufacturing (AM) as a possible strategy to develop personalized orthopedic implants with improved fixation, reduced bone-implant interface instability and, improved bone resorption.

Helene Hopfer | Food Science

Sensory & Consumer Science is an interdisciplinary field of research that connects chemistry, and materials science, with psychology, human physiology, and neurobiology. At Penn State’s Sensory Evaluation Center (SEC) in the Food Science department, we utilize humans as instruments to evaluate food, but also use food to understand human perception. I will share examples of our research that demonstrate how materials science and chemistry can be used to develop more healthy and longer-lasting food products.

Gary Chinn | Digital Learning

Recent curricular efforts by the College of Arts & Architecture have seen productive collaborations with a diversity of disciplines, including science, healthcare, and humanities. This talk explores the interesting spaces that exist at the intersections of seemingly divergent academic areas, and offers ideas about the benefits and challenges of cross-disciplinary partnerships. 

Neil Sharkey | Vice President for Research

Ruminations on Penn State’s successes and challenges over the last quarter century interwoven with a few thoughts about the future. 

Membrane microstructure is a key component to determining transport properties and, as such, morphological characterization has been of high interest across many areas of membrane research. For desalination membranes in particular, reconstructions of the 3D morphology with transmission electron tomography reveal local heterogeneities not accessible from 2D projections. Quantification of these 3D local heterogeneities is crucial towards elucidating fundamental underpinnings of membrane transport.  

Presenter: Tyler Culp

Much of the understanding in soft material self-assembly has been from a thermodynamic perspective, although most self-assembly conditions are non-equilibrium. To understand how non-equilibrium conditions impact the resulting morphology, the self-assembly process of both a co-surfactant and a block copolymer system was investigated. In the case of the block copolymer, the self-assembly process resulted in materials that were organized at both the nano and the microscale, which led to interesting structured color properties.