Alexandra Langer
Present-day residents of St. Croix (Crucians), many of whom are descendants of enslaved Africans, regularly endure droughts and lack reliable and safe drinking water. Moreover, several of the islands natural aquafers have become contaminated with salt water, while siltation from the islands eroding landmass continues to harm nearby critical coral reef ecosystems. More recently, it has also been made clear that this small Caribbean island is highly susceptible to intense tropical weather events, with many Crucians today still suffering from the extensive water damage caused by the two category 5 […]
Zihang Wang
My research topic is inspired by the recent discovery of some novel properties in superconductivity and mott-like insulating behavior of twisted bilayer graphene (TBG). In general, there exist a variety of twisted systems that may exhibit similar behavior as TBG (such as -RuCl3). My goal is to test different twisted heterostructures optical and transport properties with a standardized exfoliation/ transfer method. Since making the twisted angle heterostructure is difficult to achieve accurately by hand, the first phase of my research is to motorize the transfer stage with full control of […]
Fran Meyer
The paleoclimate of the Ordovician period (485 to 444 million years ago) is of particular interest to geologists and paleontologists because of a great biodiversification event followed by a mass extinction associated with a global glaciation. To answer why there was such a drastic change in climate, we must first understand when these trends began. While it is well-established that the beginning of the period was characterized by a warm climate and the end of the period by a major glaciation, the trajectory of cooling is poorly known. For this […]