I was interested in Dr. Malancha Gupta’s work and her lab in the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. USC has a lot of resources, and when I came out to visit, the department did a good job of showing what the department had to offer, as well as Viterbi and USC. Once I got here, it was all true – there are lots of things you can get involved in, and a lot of mentors that will help you to get the resources to do whatever you need to do.

In our group, we use a chemical vapor deposition process, which is called initiated chemical vapor deposition, to deposit functional polymer coatings for a range of different applications. Typically, the process is used to deposit thin coatings on solid substrates, like microfluid devices, or coating silicon, as well as paper-based microfluidics. My research is introducing low vapor pressure liquids into this chemical vapor deposition process. We are studying the deposition of polymers into a liquid substrate to make novel polymer and polymer liquid composite materials for a wide range of applications, which could be in separations for proton-conducting membranes, as well as catalyst ports. What we have found is the deposition in liquids is significantly different from those in solid substrates, and we are trying to understand how the process parameters of our system can affect the polymerization to be able to control what’s going on the liquid surface and be able to fine tune the properties of the polymer materials we can make.

Definitely my research advisor. She has been a mentor at every aspect of my graduate experience at USC, which I really appreciate – some other students don’t get [this opportunity]. We started talking about my big picture plans further from graduate school pretty early on and we kept an open communication so that I was always working toward some things. She has helped me with my career plans, and that started pretty early compared to other students.

She has obviously helped me with the scientific details and everything, but she has also mentored me on the women in engineering aspect and how to be successful when facing some of the challenges that women experience. She has also encouraged me to get involved with the organizations supporting women engineers on campus which has been a really positive experience.

On a personal level, I can go to her for anything that I need and she is always welcoming and supportive, but she does challenge me too.

As an undergrad in the research labs, I got a good understanding of experiments: setting them up, data analysis, etc. But coming to graduate school, I learned the bigger picture of academic research: applying to get funding, collaborations within the university, how professors’ works and interactions happen. I learned what academic research is outside of my individual lab. I was able to see more in terms of the seminars on campus and a bigger community working together and sharing ideas and contributing to other people’s research. Just being at USC, I have learned more about independence – just being a graduate student and being away from home.

I really learned how to sell my work and make my research more connected with other people and tell you why I’m doing this on a bigger picture and why it’s important. That’s probably the biggest thing that I have learned.

I like to be pretty active and do anything outside: I like to run, swim, depending on the month. I also like to cook – I’m not a great cook, but I’m learning! So on Saturday mornings, I usually like to go on a run or a bike ride.

I would say Heat Transfer. It is taught by Dr. Sahimi from the Engineering department. I had always liked heat transfer. That was during my first semester here, so it was kind of a shock because he is a challenging professor. I really felt like I had to step up to the challenge. At the end of the semester I was really happy with everything – I felt confident with the material, and I definitely learned a lot. For chemical engineering, I have to take three transfer classes: heat, mass, and viscous flow. They all rely on the same fundamental math equations, so once I got a handle on heat transfer; it was easier to understand the other classes.