I think this past week has been by far the most productive. I have been staying later than usual each day in lab and I’ve gotten pretty deep into my project. I don’t mind working late as long as there are other people around and I have good company. Sometimes, I’ll get really excited to work in the lab just because there’s not too much going on in El Paso anyways. I have been making significant progress and have also been working on an additional NEWT project with another student.

With 3 weeks remaining, I will focus on preparing samples and running various characterization tests. I am familiar with some of these techniques, but there are some new ones I had to look up. Overall, we will be doing SEM, TEM, EDX, XRD, IR, TGA, and BET analysis for each sample. I took the time to look up each of these to familiarize myself with the theory, operation principles, and applications. This week, there was a NEWT thrust 1 meeting where I got to hear other people discuss the work they are doing. I did not give any updates on my work, but I enjoyed listening to others. At the next group meeting, I will be giving a brief PowerPoint presentation to summarize my progress.