National University of Singapore (Internship/Research)
I participated in the Summer Engineering Research Internship for US Students (SERIUS) at the National University of Singapore (NUS), an eight-week research attachment program offered to students from US and Canadian partner universities. To fund my experience, I applied for and received the Vredenburg Travel Fund, an award offered through the JHU Whiting School of Engineering that supports international experiences in the form of research, internships, or service projects for selected students.
I worked under Professor Xipeng Tan in the Materials Lab within the Department of Mechanical Engineering, researching the nickel-titanium alloy (NiTi or nitinol). Nitinol has shape memory properties, meaning that it can return to its original shape after heating or the removal of applied stress, making it useful for a variety of applications, notably in the biomedical and aerospace fields (e.g. stents, artificial muscles, and actuators). I specifically explored metal 3D printing techniques, focusing on direct ink writing (DIW). I designed and 3D printed nickel-titanium lattice structures to realize “4D metal printing” (3D printing with the added dimension of shape memory) and analyzed completed parts with tools including scanning electron microscopy. The overall goal of my research was to confirm the viability of DIW as a more economical and readily available nitinol manufacturing method since traditional methods are quite cost and resource intensive.
