Midply walls have higher lateral resistance than traditional light wood frame shear walls, by creating double shear in fasteners and having larger edge distance. There is also a potential to use Midply wall as infills in Japanese Post and Beam construction, in order to improve the seismic performance of the current system. Little research has been done in this area. The proposed project will investigate the effect of different fasteners, stud material, and sheathing thickness on the behavior of Midply walls.

Riverbank erosion is a major threat to millions of Bangladeshi citizens who live in the vicinity of the country’s rivers, causing loss of life, land and livelihood. Sand-filled geotextile bags (geobags) are a solution to this problem and are widely used across Bangladesh to guide river flow and redirect channels in the wide braided rivers, preventing erosion and enabling land reclamation.

With this collaborative project we plan to proof that non-stick, self-emptying containers can be produced through molding the polymer with a laser-micromachined steel mold. Imparting a Nature-inspired functional microstructure through laser-machining onto metals is a well understood method developed in Prof. Kietzig's lab. By using a laser-structured metal mold to form plastics, we will imprint the inverse pattern onto polymer surfaces through an industrial scale injection molding process.

Environmental pollution is one of the greatest problems that the world is facing today. The conventional detergent and surfactant water based methods are costly, not eco- friendly. Applying photocatalytic coatings that utilize solar energy on the exterior and interior surfaces of buildings is a promising method to tackle air pollution and clean the surfaces with lower cost. Upon sun light and ambient light, after a few chemical reaction, TiO2 nano-particles as a photocatalyst generate reactive agent, which can oxidize organic substances.

Flexible wearable sensors have found increasing application in many situations, especially in biomedical engineering and health care. Recent research has presented methods for fabricating flexible, stretchable, and conductive sensors using silver nanowires embedded in a flexible silicon elastomer (typically polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)) as dry electrodes for ECG (electrocardiograph).
In this project, we will investigate how the fabrication parameters affect the properties and desired sensing performance of formed PDMS and nanowire electrodes, as wearable sensors.

Flat product manufacturers are under constant pressure to increase productivity, and simultaneously maintain high quality of continuously cast steel slabs because of stringent quality demands imposed by their customers. However, increasing productivity has detrimental effects on slab quality, and defects and rejections have a major impact on the producers bottom-line. Controlling fluid flows in continuous casting molds is one of the key parameters to ensure cleaner steel and reduce defects.

This research project deals with the development of the next generation of a set of chemicals on an industrial scale that form a catalyst in conjunction with a metal. The new catalysts are intended to be employed by Digital Specialty Chemicals’ customer in the manufacture of plasticizers, paints, and detergents. The intern will focus on the optimized chemical synthesis of critical components toward the final products, as well as the identification of commercially more viable options in terms of solvents used for the process.