Over the past seven years, part of my research has focused on the use of nanoscale and microscale fillers as a strategy to transform the performance of polymers by providing new mechanisms to engineer dielectric, magnetic and coupled functionality, with important implications in actuation, energy harvesting and energy storage. The goal of the talk, which seeks to assess my interdisciplinary experiences with colleagues and students at Penn State and other institutions, is to provide an example of critical self-refection that might prove useful to colleagues interested in making sense of their own collaborative research and teaching practice.
