I led a collaborative project involving a search for an evidence of a gravitational wave background (GWB) with all the spatial correlations allowed by general metric theories of gravity using NANOGrav’s 12.5 year data set. The search found no substantial evidence in favor of the existence of such correlations.
The...
Null networks are a type of random graph that is favored for the analysis of a wide variety of real-world networks, including gene-regulatory networks, food webs, and species co-occurrence matrices. As a hypothesis-generating tool, null networks are invaluable because they can reveal network motifs and unusual large-scale properties of networks...
We found unexpected complexities resulting from the miscible displacement of a non-Newtonian fluid for both convergent and divergent flow as observed by displacing a miscible shear-thinning fluid (xanthan gum) in a radial Hele-Shaw cell. Such complex patterns have not been described before for either Newtonian or non- Newtonian fluids. A...
Microtubules (MT) are highly dynamic cylindrical-like structures within cells whose growth is controlled by motor proteins, a class of biological machines that walk along the MT while simultaneously regulating MT growth. Here we are interested in the behavior of kinesin-14 motor proteins. Although processive behavior of kinesin-14 motors has been...
Metallic glasses are attracting tremendous attention because of their fundamental significance and great potential to be used as structural or functional materials in engineering applications. Significant efforts have been devoted to studying their unique properties as well as their disordered nature. Metallic glasses possess much higher strength and elastic strain...
Transportation systems need to get better by moving ever more people while consuming ever fewer resources. To build better transportation systems, planners need an accurate understanding of how people exercise mobility and tools to apply that understanding to the transportation system. Such an understanding can come through the development of...
Future quantum technologies will require high-efficiency, on-demand sources of entangled photons. A possible route to building such light sources employs two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors interfaced with a source of Cooper pairs. To investigate the possibility of such devices, we are testing methods to make high transparency n-type contacts, p-type contacts, and...
A great variety of topologically protected defects exist in ordinary and exotic states of matter. Some of them are promising candidates for technological applications such as magnetic memory or quantum computers. Others possess some properties of elementary particles that could lead to potential applications in quantum fields. Nematic liquid crystals...
Multi-phase flow in porous media includes many instances of subsurface flow. Three-phase flow in particular is important in situations of enhanced oil recovery, CO2 sequestration, and groundwater remediation. Many studies have been performed on how two fluid phases (oil/water or air/water) behave in porous media, but very few studies exist...
The Micralyne microfluidic toolkit (μTK) was an instrument built by Micralyne in the early 2000’s. It was built for electrophoresis and has a sensitive laser-induced fluorescence detection system. The updates to the system were upgrading the control GUI from running in LabVIEW 5 (Windows XP, 2000) to LabVIEW 2012 (Windows...