Undergraduate Research at Vassar College

During my undergraduate career at Vassar College I worked in Professor Brian Daly's ultra-fast laser lab. I modeled nanoscale heat flow using COMSOL Multiphysics and presented my work at COMSOL Conference 2008.

COMSOL 2008 abstract:

The nature of heat flow is well understood in bulk materials where the mean free paths of phonons, the quantized vibrations that carry heat, are much smaller than the dimensions of the material. When the dimensions of the material approach a comparable size to the phonon mean free path, heat flow enters a new regime, the nanoscale. The Fourier and Cattaneo Equations describe bulk heat flow well, but radiative boundary terms must be considered when modeling nanoscale heat flow. We take these equations and input them into COMSOL with the hope of eventually linking nanoscale and bulk heat flow properties into one simulation.