End of Sophomore Year Reflection

At the first meeting of the year for UTC’s chapter of American Institute of Chemical
Engineers (AIChE), Dr. Sungwoo Yang was introduced as a new member of the growing Chemical
Engineering faculty, where he gave a 30 minute presentation on his research from MIT and his
goals to continue. After the meeting, I spoke with him about joining his research team and went to
his office the next day where he assigned me a set of equations to model. The goal of the project
was to model the radiative heat transfer through a highly porous, super low density material called
silica aerogel, which has superior optical properties in Python, a programming software.
I presented this research at 3 conferences this past year, the first of which was held in the
capitol building in Nashville, Tennessee at Posters at the Capitol. There, I was able to meet with
House Member, Ron Lollar from Memphis very briefly. Next, I presented at the university wide
Research Dialogues where UTC students from all disciplines shared posters and presentations.
Lastly, I presented at the College of Engineering and Computer Science’s first annual Technology
Symposium where CECS undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty research was
displayed.