Do not disturb - Busy Writing

This was originally a hand-written. My computer had crashed in the morning and I decided to use pen and paper to use whatever thoughts came into my head. Therefore the first line which states, "write write write" does literally refer to writing, where as "type type type" maybe seem more appropriate now.

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Write write write. That seems to be a major part of my life now. Whether it's writing down the next draft of the paper (which I'm still at draft one for one, and draft three for the other), or writing my overview document, writing abstracts for upcoming conferences, or writing weekly reports. And on top of all that, there's also this blog.


But there's also an additional amount of subtle writing skills required as a researcher, which adds up the to writing total. These might be the chicken scratches one makes for notes and ideas that come from reading a paper or a spur of the moment. While short and concise (in addition to messy), they need to contain enough content just to re-spark the same idea when we glance at it again at a later time. There are the do-it notes to yourself, which vary in degree in tone, some just stating a task to be completed, while others are more stern, telling YOU to finish something. At that point one has to wonder if they're on the verge of insanity for talking to themselves in such an aggressive manner.

There are the outlines for presentations, as well as writing in the presentation in itself which turn out to be a challenge. Too many words and instantly the slide or poster becomes too cluttered, too full, and ironically, too illegible. Too little and you wonder if anyone really took anything out of what you just said, or even if they understand you to begin with (this is a frequent problem of mine).

There are many moments of writing  required of researchers and scientists. Sometimes they're immediately obvious to us, such as the requirement to write and publish papers (although one can also attempt to avoid that). While other times they are more subtle and are in our every life. Ultimately we'll find that there are no shortcuts to getting better at any of these things, but to continue practicing and attempting each one.

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In other words, this post has been written to motivate me to continue blogging.

Three Minute Thesis (3MT)

In December, Carnegie Mellon University announced that they hosting their first ever 3 minute thesis competition (3MT). The history of 3MT started in the University of Queensland, Australia, where the university decided to host a competition challenging students to explain their research in 3 minutes or less to an intelligent, but non-technical audience. This forced students to develop their academic, presentation, and research communication skills in how to effectively present research.

When first announcing such a competition, the turnout exceeded their expectations, as hundreds of students attempted to present their work in three minutes. Since then, the 3MT has spread to other colleges, challenging students to condense their thesis work into three minutes.

Both my roommate and I signed up in December, and forgot about it until January and two weeks before the heats. Even then, neither one of us prepared our presentation until three days prior to the date. After all, how difficult would it be to talk for just 3 minutes?

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It turned out to be impossible. Although we were told to assume an "intelligent" crowd, the number of terms and concepts used in material science are often quite unfamiliar to even just other engineers. (Ask a mechanical engineer what is the grain size or microstructure of his tested metal). I think the trouble in our field often arises from the fact that we are still a science heavy field, and therefore we are in frontiers that people may not often recognize or know. Where as to explain engineering, it's often quite easier to explain the sort of the improvement you're making in material. But to develop a truly novel material based on a fundamental, scientific discovery is far more challenging.

While my roommate's challenge was to explain that plastics are polymers, which are made of up of individual monomer units (and furthermore she needed to get into atomic transfer rapid polymerization), my challenge was explain grain boundaries in microstructures. These are things that we don't see in person unless with a microscope, in a lab, and we realize if we started discussing just our research, only other material scientists would be able to follow. 

We spent our entire weekend thinking of how to resolve this problem. I re-watched all the 2 minute thesis presented by PhDcomics, and figured if they could do it in just 2 minutes, I had to find a way to do it in 3 minutes. My roommate obviously did a better job as she won the heat and is moving on the next round (on Feb. 18th!) despite the stress this caused both of us. At one point we were completely resolved to not go, though we kept changing our minds back and forth. The rules said not to dumb it down too much, but it was necessary to communicate with the crowd. Regardless, we both felt extremely rewarded and quite content with both of our final presentations.

I'll type up the transcript another time, but ultimately I used the story of the three little pigs, who were dealing with a materials problem. Fundamentally, they were presented with a materials issue where they needed something to withstand the big bad wolf's huff and puff, therefore the material property needed to be rigid, strong, etc.

I turned this story around though, by assuming all the pigs had bricks now though (same starting material). But instead, one stacked his bricks up to make his walls, the other one spent some time to lay them but still had cracks and gaps, and again, only the last one took his time to carefully lay down each one.

The bricks represent the grains we find in a microstructure, and just as important as picking the right material is, so is how we put together the atoms, which become crystals, then are considered grains, are to determining the properties of the final bulk material. Therefore, grain boundary engineering, which takes additional time and work (thermomechanical processing) just like the last pig, gives us improved material properties just based on the way grains are configured alone, much like how the bricks are arranged.


At the end of the day, I realized I had found a way to explain my research a little bit better. Whether or not everyone would get it or not the first time, I don't know. Although maybe, I've found a way to explain it at the bar (this was a popular problem my former co-graduate student presented to me all the time =P). If you ever have the chance to participate in a 3MT, I would definitely suggest giving it a shot.

The following is the slide that accompanied my talk:

TMS 2014 Preparations

It's that time again. Two weeks before the conference and time to start making a presentation. This time it's actually an oral and a poster presentation. But if I have understood correctly, the poster session I have signed up for is dedicated for undergraduate and graduate students, for the poster competition. Which hopefully takes off some pressure of me as my poster goal is to publicize my research versus a prize.

After doing two oral presentations at MS&T 2013, I found that it was too much to prepare mentally. The results were there, but taking time to have a clear and lucid presentation for both proved to be challenging. In fact at the end of the day, I'm not sure if either came across well either. Although the reasoning behind two talks was that my previous group members had did it before, and basically told me it was a fun one time experience (even though my advisors do it all the time).

I decided the best way to get your value out of a conference though was to do two presentations in order to maximize your exposure. Whether this is true or not, I'll find out. However when working on so many varied projects, this is also the only way to create a discussion for each one. Hence having both an oral talk and poster for TMS.

My oral talk is primarily focused on the effects of temperature and deformation on recrystallization, more specifically twinning. We already know that twinning is highly dependent on the recrystallization stage of the microstructure. Thereby by alternating variables that influence recrystallization, we should expect a change in the twin content of the material as well. Thus the talk will focus on the results of those experiments.

My poster will be focused on the use of Monte-Carlo simulations for twin formation during recrystallization. This has been more or less a side project for me. There are no conclusive results, but should hopefully interest anyone who works with microstructural simulation or twin formation. Of course everything is still only a simulation, so it can never be perfectly representative of a real experimental microstructure.

Back to work! After the talks and posters (and beaches!), it's paper writing again...