Two researchers at Transylvania University are among those statewide working on projects tied to furthering manufacturing technology.
Transy Physics Professor Stephen Johnson will use $30,000 a year to work with different students over five summers. Johnson sees great benefits for student workers.
“We have papers and publications that come out as a result of the work we do over the summer and the students get their names on papers, they get to go to conferences and present their work. They get to start networking as early as their undergraduate career and really just experience how science is done how high level research is done,” said Johnson
Specifically, Johnson’s team will work with semi-conducting and solar materials that could be a part of sensors in robot technology eventually. Johnson noted Transy is the only private liberal arts school in the group of eight collaborating universities in Kentucky.
Transylvania Chemistry Professor Kyle Schnitzenbaumer will use $50,000 in seed funding for instruments that determine intensity and color of light a material absorbs or emits. He said that could have implications for T.V. and cell phone screens.? “Trying to define the properties of these materials, that way when someone is looking at their options to say, ‘hey, what things are we going to incorporate into let’s say this computer screen or this television display. They have a more informed way to go about that,” Schnitzenbaumer said.
Schnitzenbaumer says this collaboration will help to tackle up and coming technologies over the next 10, 15, 20 years.
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