Two Imperial Materials students to spend autumn semester at MIT

Two students from the Department of Materials have joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the Autumn Term semester.

Every year, the Department of Materials selects two undergraduate students to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the autumn term as part of an exchange programme organised by Imperial College London. 

In the Department of Materials, the MIT-student exchange is open to MEng students in their fourth year of study. Places are limited and allocated on a competitive basis. 

Shawn Huang and Maria Giannakoudi have arrived at MIT and started classes for the Autumn semester. 

Shawn Huang will be supervised by Professor Michael Short at MIT and Professor Mark Wenman at Imperial. His research will investigate a new materials characterisation technique, Transient Grating Spectroscopy, which measures how a material changes over time when a laser beam passes through it. He will use this technique on optical fibres exposed to radiation to measure the extremely cold temperatures needed to keep a superconducting magnet working inside a tokamak fusion reactor.

He comments, "It has been amazing to experience Boston with the entire exchange group, and the orientation week was really fun. Starting my master's project is the most important aspect of my semester, but I'm also looking forward to taking classes like Applied Nuclear Physics and Reactor Design to support my knowledge of nuclear materials." 

Completing my project at MIT and Imperial will provide the unique opportunity to collaborate with two research groups, enriching my experience and broadening my expertise Maria Giannakoudi

Maria Giannakoudi will be supervised by Professor Xuanhe Zhao at MIT and Dr Florian Bouville at Imperial. Her project will explore global water scarcity and how atmospheric water harvesting could be a potential solution by capturing water vapour using sorbent materials. Maria will focus on developing an aerogel-hydrogel AWH system, working to improve the scalability and reliability of atmospheric water harvesting and speeding up how quickly the system works.

Maria comments: "I'm grateful for the valuable opportunity to join ZhaoLab, which will allow me to strengthen my research and lab skills.

Completing my project at MIT and Imperial will provide the unique opportunity to collaborate with two research groups, enriching my experience and broadening my expertise."

Find out more about Imperial-MIT student exchange opportunities.