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The Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program
by Kari Siegle
Since the beginning of his college career Ryan Godfrey has taken advantage of all the options available to him. He enrolled in the Institute of Technology his senior year of high school through a post-secondary program, took honors courses and is currently conducting research through the University's Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.
Along with his studies, working on research projects for the UROP program helped him find his niche in the sciences. "Doing the research really confirmed and set me on the right path. This is what I want to do," said Godfrey, who will graduate this spring with a degree in physics. This past summer he measured how bits, which control a computer's memory capacity, lose their net magnetization over long periods of time. This phenomenon translates into lost data and information.
The program has given research opportunities to many undergraduates before Godfrey and continues to do so today, funding about 375 projects a year. It was one of the first programs in the country designed to support undergraduate research, and since its inception in 1985, a large number of similar projects have appeared in colleges across the country. The University began the program as an opportunity for undergraduates to connect with faculty and and conduct research. Participants often list UROP experience on a resume, and the program helps students make career choices. IT was one of the program's original sponsors, along with the College of Agriculture, College of Biological Sciences and the College of Liberal Arts. Today the program has expanded to include all the colleges on the University campus and students from Duluth, Morris and Crookston.
UROP coordinator Vicky Munro said the importance of research experience has filtered down the ranks over time. Although long a staple of faculty and graduate student life, today research experience is almost an expected part of an undergraduate education. The demand for students who have conducted scientific investigations and have written or published papers is greater than for those who haven't.
Full-time undergraduate students in good academic standing are eligible for the program. Students write a project proposal in which they outline an area of research and identify a faculty member to work with. Peter Hudleston, IT's associate dean for undergraduate studies and program coordinator, said the proposal must be scientifically worthwhile and the project must yield results during the 120 hours students are funded. At the end of the time period, students write a report on their findings and an evaluation of the program. Students receive a $950 financial stipend for the time they spend on their projects and can receive an allowance of $250 for supplies and expenses. Munro said by offering students monetary compensation for their research, the program allows many students an experience they might not otherwise get. "It's an opportunity for students to work on something that will help them more than being off-campus flipping burgers," she said.
Nearly 30 IT students applied for the program this past fall. Hudleston said the relatively small number of students is the result of students' full schedules, a lack of information about the program and a tendency for students to feel uncomfortable approaching faculty members. Current projects range from organic chemical synthesis to analyzing how the stock market works.
Looking at Godfrey's family, it's easy to see where he found his interest in the sciences. His father is a doctor, his mother a food scientist and his uncle is an electrical engineer. Another uncle worked on the University's particle accelerator project, and although he now lives in Texas, he often takes Godfrey to conferences on subjects like plasma physics. Through the UROP program, Godfrey was able to conduct undergraduate research of his own and continue a family tradition.
In a room where the ceiling pipes are painted in bright colors and five kinds of fish swim in a large tank near the door, Godfrey worked this past summer on hard disk drive decay. Understanding the decay is important because one of the trends in computer design is to squeeze more bits into smaller spaces, thereby increasing memory. The smaller the bit, however, the quicker decay can occur. By densely packing bits together, higher and more unstable energy states occur. By understanding this phenomenon, "safe" bit sizes may be determined, and computer memory can be optimized.
When computer bits in hard drives are "written to," their magnetized dipoles are aligned in a specific direction, creating a magnetic field. Godfrey used a c-magnet with wires wrapped around it and current pulsing though it. The apparatus was then held over the top of the bits. The c-magnet's current induced a magnetic field that aligned the bits' dipoles in a specific direction, creating another magnetic field and a high-energy state. But the bits are not all pointing in the same direction; in particular, a bit's neighbor will be in the opposite direction. Godfrey investigated this micro-universe by examining the peaks and valleys on an oscilloscope and measuring the strength of the magnetic fields.
Domain decay results when the bits return to their random orientations, low energy states, and a no-net-magnetism condition. But the decay is something few of us with computers need to be concerned about anytime in the near future. "You only have to worry about it if you're around for a 100,000 years," Godfrey said.
The first method he used to study rapid domain decay involved two computer heads pointed towards each other over a rotating disk. He would write to the disk at one point and then examine the bits after the disk revolved to the second head. By doing this he hoped to measure the decay time. Unfortunately, the heads picked up magnetic fields from one another, and the oscilloscope's readout showed this extra noise. Another problem was that the bits decayed too slowly for noticeable changes to be detected.
Godfrey developed another method to document decay by using only one head and allowing the disk to spin for a period of time. Instead of measuring in microseconds, as in the two head method, Godfrey measured the decay over a period of hours or even days. However, one problem this method presented was that the one head needed to remain in exactly the same position. Left for too long in one spot, outside forces acted on it and moved it.
He finally decided to heat things up a bit. By baking a disk drive in an oven at about 1,000 degrees he could speed up the decay. Then Godfrey extrapolated the data back to room temperature. "It was kind of a jump of intuition. I thought 'Hey, it might work if I did it this way,'" said Godfrey, who added that it was his advisor, physics professor Dan Dahlberg, who gave him the idea. But he said he was unable to heat the disk drive at a number of different temperatures and collect the data because of a lack of time.
This was Godfrey's first research project, and he encountered a number of problems. He also had to deal with issues he hadn't encountered in the classroom before, such as building circuitry. Sometimes what he thought would work originally, didn't. "I had to learn it's not going to work the first time and it's almost guaranteed not to work the fifth time," he said.
Making mistakes, bumping into experimental problems and finding out where to go to answer questions are all discoveries students should make, Hudleston said. "It makes the scientific process much more real than if they get everything out of a book," he said.
Dahlberg's participation in the UROP program as a project advisor is a result of something he learned as an undergraduate. He said he might not have stayed in physics for as long as he had if he did not have the experience of working in a lab as an undergraduate. It's evident from looking around his lab how he tries to make the atmosphere more upbeat for his students. One year he contributed to the purchase of an espresso machine for them, and the bright powder blue door and paneling were his ideas. "Students can take classes but they really don't know what you do in the business," Dahlberg said. He likened a scientific career without real world experience to wanting to be a guide on wild river rapids and not going out and getting wet. Another part of his research Godfrey likes is that he is largely left to discover new things on his own, with his advisor in the background to help. "It's nice from the standpoint that I'm working on my own on the project and I can go at my own pace," he said.
After analyzing the domain decay of hard disk drives, Godfrey decided to pursue another project. He's currently studying bio-magnetism and hopes to eventually develop it into a senior thesis. While his stipend hours have run out, he continues to work on the project under the direction of Dahlberg. Godfrey chose the topic because he wasn't interested in studying subjects where the results are predetermined and the conclusion is written before conducting the experiment.
Godfrey works with ferritin proteins, iron storage proteins extracted from horse spleens. These proteins have a polypeptide shell and an interior cavity that can be as wide as nine nanometers. Ions travel through tiny channels in the outside layer to the cavity where they couple together and cancel each other's magnetic properties. Normally these ions are frozen in particular magnetic directions . If alternating current is added and the temperature reaches 80 to 120 Kelvin, the ions can flip charge but still remain anti-parallel in relation to each other. This is called the blocking temperature, or the point where the thermal energy overcomes the magnetic order and energy. Godfrey plans to look at the AC susceptibility by varying the temperature, time and core sizes of his samples.
Godfrey was especially intrigued because two previous studies offered conflicting conclusions. "It's attractive to me because it's something new," he said. One study used reduction, meaning an empty core was used and ions were added to make it larger, resulting in graphed conclusions that were non-linear. These proteins also had rough textures in their outer coatings. The other study considered full cores, so ions were removed to make it smaller.
While Godfrey said this project doesn't have any direct applications, it can contribute to the basic knowledge of magnetism. "It's useful from the standpoint that when you understand something you can better utilize the properties of it," he said.
Also, much of the research conducted today is done without an immediate application, said Dahlberg. No one would have guessed, he said, that when scientists like Marie Curie began researching radioactivity their results would eventually lead to x-rays, nuclear power, and radiation therapy for cancer.
"You never know when something you do in fundamental research is going to have a big impact in technology or just in how we view ourselves in the universe," Dahlberg said.
