Junior Jaylah “Jay” Easter came away from UMES’ Three Minute Thesis competition last month with a first place win in the undergraduate category and the People’s Choice Award (undergraduate and graduate students) netting him $400 in prizes.
The Three Minute Thesis “challenges participants to present their research in just 180 seconds in an engaging form that can be understood by an intelligent audience with no background in the research area. This exercise develops presentation, research and academic communication skills and supports the development of research students’ capacity to explain their work effectively.”
“The most significant challenge I encountered was implementing a method through which technical scientific information could be presented in a digestible format, ensuring the understanding of my work to an audience with varying degrees of technical experience in my area of research,” Easter said. “To achieve this, I practiced presenting my presentation to peers from various backgrounds and utilized the feedback I received to ensure that it would be engaging and informative.”
An engineering major, Easter is also a Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation Research Scholar working in Dr. Kausik Das’ lab and a Henson Entrepreneur Endowed Honors Scholar. The research topic he presented for the 3MT competition was, “Into the Nanoverse: Traversing the World of the Infinitesimally Small,” which relates to the nanoscale transport phenomena—whereby the transport of properties such as energy, mass and charge on the small scale is explored.
Working under Das and in collaboration with the (Dr. Hadi) Ghasemi lab at the University of Houston, Easter worked to “optimize the etching step in the nanofabrication process of devices to be used in nanoscale transport research. We used techniques such as photolithography and reactive ion etching to create nanochannels in silicon substrates. Our results present a reference for nanoscale transport applications, which outlines the etching parameters optimized to 100 nanometer channel depth. The results are even generalizable to other channel depths, making the research relevant to various engineering applications.”
Easter’s research savvy also earned him second place overall in the University System of Maryland’s Fall 2021 LSAMP Research Symposium.
“Das’ teaching and research are supported by the National Science Foundation (HBCU-UP Award #1719425), the Department of Education (MSEIP Award #P120A70068) with a MSEIP CCEM grant, Maryland Space Grant Consortium, and the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute through a MIPS grant.“
Gail Stephens, Agricultural Communications and Media Associate, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, School of Agricultural and Natural Sciences, UMES Extension, gcstephens@umes.edu, 410-621-3850.
Photos by Todd Dudek, Agricultural Communications, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, School of Agricultural and Natural Sciences, UMES Extension, tdudek@umes.edu.
