After a long day of presentations!
Hello hello! Long time no blog (oops). I’ve been busy!
Now that I’m about a month into junior year of college (crazy how time flies!) I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what I did over the summer.
Around November or December, I started frantically applying to internships, research programs, REUs, and pretty much anything else I could find. Somewhere in that process, I found SULI (Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships), a Department of Energy program, and eventually matched with a project in Argonne National Laboratory’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Materials Group.
My co-interns from my lab!
I spent the summer studying how phosphoric acid affects platinum catalysts used in high-temperature hydrogen fuel cells. Although phosphoric acid helps conduct protons, it can also stick to platinum and block the sites needed for the reaction. Using electrochemical testing, I compared a conventional catalyst with a framework-protected catalyst and found that, although both lost activity, the protected catalyst was more resistant to phosphoric acid “poisoning.”
A lot of my days involved making catalyst ink, preparing electrodes, running electrochemical tests, and then staring at graphs while trying to figure out whether the results made sense. Research involved much more troubleshooting and repeating experiments than I expected, which could be frustrating but made it much more satisfying when the data finally worked.
Me and friends at Learning On the Lawn, our end of the summer poster symposium.
Through the program, I worked closely with a mentor who taught me how to do electrochemistry. I also became friends with the other interns in my group, who were researching similar topics but working on different projects. Having other people going through the same experience made it much easier, and much more fun, to learn new techniques, troubleshoot experiments, and adjust to working in a research lab full-time.
Hanging out at an intern campfire.
One thing I loved about working a 9-to-5 was that once I left the lab, my work stayed there. This meant that the hundred or so interns were free to hang out and explore Chicago. We spent our summer nights playing volleyball, competing in board games, celebrating birthdays with elaborate DIY cakes, and taking evening trips into the city. I made some amazing friends over the summer, and it was so special to watch everyone learn and grow while conducting research on so many different topics.
Sunset on a beach in Chicago.
We also attended DOE seminars about research, graduate school, and different career paths. At the end of the internship, I wrote a technical paper and presented my research at Argonne’s Learning on the Lawn symposium.
I left Argonne with a stronger understanding of electrochemistry, a greater appreciation for the patience research requires, and a better idea of what I might want to pursue after college.
