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University of Tennessee Materials Science & Engineering Department |
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Summer Research Spotlight: Jakob Scroggins @ SLAC Palo Alto, California, Summer, 2024  MSE senior, Jakob Scroggins, spent the summer participating in the Summer Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) program run by the United States Department of Energy. He performed research with mentor Dr. Sikhumbuzo Masina at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Jakob's work focused on combined x-ray fluorescence (XRF) and x-ray diffraction (XRD) as part of an efficient workflow for simultaneously determining elemental and phase compositions of unknown samples. While there, Jakob calibrated the fluorescence detector in the combined XRF-XRD setup on beamline 2-1 at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource for Mn, Zn and Co. This included grinding materials, loading them into capillaries, collecting XRF and XRD data and analyzing the data to form calibration curves. The curves can be used to estimate the concentration of Mn, Zn and Co in geological samples. Jakob expresses his thanks to his mentor, Dr. Masina, for being an excellent teacher. In addition to research, Jakob enjoyed exploring the bay area. On one of many weekend trips with other interns, he kayaked with sea otters and ate fresh crab in Monterey!  More photos on the Keffer research group site. |