Spotlight
Jalina Keeling
Jalina Keeling is an undergraduate student with the Itai Cohen Group on Complex Matter Physics (who is at Cornell as part of the NSF's Research Experiences for Undergraduates program). She is conducting experiments similar to the epitaxial growth of crystals, but using polymer beads. She uses a confocal microscope to scan a sample of these beads from bottom to top. Her research seeks to answer the questions "What structures form? How do we tune the concentration of polymers to change these structures? How can we control what structures form? How can we prevent defects?" Her research is the product of cross-campus collaboration that Cornell is famous for: people in engineering manufacture the beads, theorists simulate what the phase behavior might look like, and Jalina tests their theories.