Undergraduate Scholars Program

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The Undergraduate Scholars Program (USP) is one of the largest multidisciplinary undergraduate research programs at MSU. We are here to help undergraduate students in all disciplines pursue research, scholarship, and creative projects.

The Undergraduate Scholars Program (USP) facilitates, supports, and promotes undergraduate research and scholarship by providing funding and logistical support directly to students.

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Measuring Protons with Photons: An Optical pH Instrument for Large-Scale Monitoring of Ocean Acidification
(Montana State University, 2017-04) Pardis, William
pH, a measure of proton concentration, is a critical parameter impacting our global ocean ecology due to its governing nature in chemical equilibrium. Since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, A 0.1 drop in ocean pH has been measured off the coast of Hawaii. Many data sets suggest this is a result of a chemical exchange between Earth’s atmosphere and its oceans. 30 to 40% of atmospheric carbon dioxide is absorbed by our oceans. Carbon dioxide reacts with water to produce carbonic acid, which decreases oceanic pH. The implications of this is not fully understood due to its large spatial dimensions. Usable technology exists to measure pH with sufficient accuracy and precision, but is very expensive and therefore inaccessible to the general public. We developed an indicator-based pH photometer for in-the-field measurements that is easily assembled, inexpensive, handheld, and runs off of a cell phone allowing for web linked geo-referenced data. Five of these instruments were taken and tested in the South Pacific during a student study abroad trip. The instrument proved to be useful for in-field scientific inquiry and competitive relative to other instruments of its class at a fraction of the cost. The photometer, nicknamed the “pHyter”, is currently undergoing field testing by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and lab tests by Sunburst Sensors, a national leader in this technology based in Missoula, MT. A citizen’s science effort distributing pHyters on coastlines around the world would surpass the size of this issue and begin a better understanding of this important change in our global system.
Height Reduction of Magnetic Elements to Accelerate Magnetic Element Chip Production
(Montana State University, 2017-04) Judge, Derek
Mechanotransduction comprises the conversion of mechanical forces into a cellular event. It has been shown that cell polarity of cortical neurons can be influenced with the use of nanoscaled mechanical forces. These forces are created with the use of a magnetic gradient produced by the deformation of the magnetic field by micro-scale magnetic elements on a chip, and ferromagnetic nanoparticles or microparticles that are inserted into the cells. The purpose of my research is to optimize the placement and geometric shape of soft iron microstructures on chip, which we call magnetic elements, so that the elements can be shortened, reducing the amount of time to produce a chip, along with reducing the cost per chip. The rate for the 80/20 Nickel-Iron material that is currently being used for the magnetic elements is deposited as a constant rate of 1.6 Angstroms per second, so reducing the height is the best way to speed up production. To optimize the dimensions of the magnetic elements we developed a method to simulate the magnetic field gradient in a program called COMSOL, in order to see the force plot generated by the configuration. Based on static magnetic field simulations with an external 150mT magnetic field, we found that 4μm x 8μm x 6μm (length, width, height) magnetic element generates a magnetic flux gradient with peak values of .2 kg/(m*s^2*A) near the elements. Electroplating 80/20 Nickel-Iron on glass substrates confirmed a deposition rate of 1.2 Angstroms per second. Reducing the height of magnetic elements expedite the process of chip fabrication and increase material stability, allowing for more experiments to happen at a faster rate. Furthermore, an optimized design can allow the scaling down of the chip design, allowing for subcellular manipulation.
RadSat-U
(Montana State University, 2017-04) JOhnson, Matthew; Mills, Daniels; Kelly, David; Marchwinski, Colton; Dover, Jonathan
MSU researchers have been working for the past eight years on a computer system that is tolerant to ionizing radiation for space applications. In order to quantify the amount of radiation experienced by the computer, the RadSat-U team is developing a photo-voltaic radiation sensor. RadSat-U, a 3U satellite designed to carry the radiation tolerant computer into space, is the ideal test platform. The experiment consists of a fully integrated solar cell and signal conditioning circuit designed to fit within RadSat-U. RadSat-U will then carry both the radiation tolerant computer and solar cell experiment into orbit where the space radiation environment will test the limitations of both systems. A full scale test will elevate this new technology to the highest NASA standard for emerging technology, allowing it be used in future missions.
Semi-automated creation and classification of high-resolution multi-swath hyperspectral data using Landsat 8 surface reflectance data as a reference target and a novel histogram based unsupervised classification technique to determine natural classes from
(Montana State Univeristy, 2017-04) McCann, Cooper
Flight-based hyperspectral imaging systems have the potential, due to their low-cost and high coverage area, to provide important information for ecosystem and environmental studies as well as aide in land management. In order to realize this potential, automated methods must be developed to provide large-area calibrated data allowing for temporal data sets at the mesoscale. A semi-automated method of producing a high-resolution, large-area, radiometrically-calibrated hyperspectral data set using the Landsat surface reflectance (L8SR) data product as a reference target is presented, along with a histogram based unsupervised classification scheme. The radiometric calibration method uses standard hyperspectral processing techniques that are extended to include removal of uneven illumination conditions between flight passes in order to create large-area radiometrically consistent data. Additionally, through spectral and spatial resampling Landsat 8 surface reflectance data are used as a radiometric reference target. Advantages of the calibration technique include the need for minimal site access, no ancillary instrumentation, and automated data processing and can be extended to arbitrarily large areas. The classification technique uses a mathematical model based on biophysically relevant parameters to fit the hyperspectral data on a pixel-by-pixel basis thus achieving a degree of noise reduction and data compression. Histograms of these fit parameters can be selectively split in order to naturally classify the data for anomaly detection of other class specific analyses. Data from hyperspectral flights acquired 06/21/2014, 06/24/2015, and 06/30/2016, covering 18.5M m2 (4500 acres), are presented.
AUV - Automated Unmanned Vehicle for the RoboSub 2012 competition
(2013-03) Shirley, Jesse; Abraham, Dylan; Mondl, Sarah; Lloyd, Hunter
This is a project that will be developing the software (artificial intelligence and mission controlling) for a AUV, or Automated Unmanned Vehicle, which is being built for an upcoming competition. It is for AUVSI’s RoboSub competition, and it will be a submarine that has to perform various tasks, such as picking up and dropping markers, firing torpedoes, etc., autonomously.
Fabrication of Optical Nanostructures using HSQ Masks
(2013-03) Rydberg, Skyler; Rydberg, Skyler; Nakagawa, Wataru; Dickensheets, David
Subwavelength-scale nanostructures hold great promise for the development of new, useful optical devices. One of the challenges in realizing such devices is the creation of the desired nanoscale patterns in materials such as silicon with the required precision. Recently, a new resist material for electron-beam lithography, Hydrogen Silsesquioxane (HSQ), has emerged as a solution to this challenge. The purpose of this project is to create a recipe for a 100 nm layer of HSQ to be applied to a silicon substrate by means of spin-coating. After formulation of a recipe to achieve the desired 100 nm thickness, tests were performed to determine which electron beam dosages produced the best features in terms of resolution and contrast. Grating patterns were created with varying periods while maintaining a constant 50% fill factor. Characterization of the gratings was performed to determine the optimal dosage for these features. The optimal dose was found to be 95 μC/cm2. After determining an ideal recipe, the HSQ was used as an etch mask to create hybrid HSQ-silicon gratings with nanoscale features. This capability will enable the development of a number of new optical devices based on nanostructures, for a range of interdisciplinary applications.
Testing a Low-cost All-Sky Infrared Cloud Imager
(2013-03) Redman, Brian; Shaw, Joseph
Information about cloud patterns is useful for climate science studies and Earth-space optical communications research. Thermal infrared sky imaging is a technique that records cloud patterns by measuring the heat radiation emitted by the clouds. This method is particularly well suited for continuous ground-based measurements of cloud cover statistics because it functions equally well during day and night. Sophisticated infrared cloud imagers have been developed previously at Montana State University, but there is an interest in exploring the capabilities of lower-cost systems. A prototype of a low-cost infrared cloud imager capable of imaging the entire sky dome has been developed. The prototype of this system uses a metal dome to reflect the whole sky to an off-axis infrared camera. The algorithms to analyze the distorted image were also developed. In this presentation, an overview of the instrument design will be presented, and example images will be shown and described.
Zoom lenses based on variable power optics
(2013-03) Podder, Rajit; Dickensheets, David
I want to investigate and simulate the performance of a four element zoom lens system based on variable power optics. A zoom lens is a lens with variable power that changes its field of view while maintaining its focus at a fixed position. So in this project we will monitor the performance of the zoom lens system in terms of its zoom ratio and field of view. In particular we are interested in small format zoom lenses, with potential applications for cell phone cameras, binoculars or other optical instruments. I worked on a two lens system and then proceeded to a bigger three lens system under the guidance of Professor David L. Dickensheets. In this project, I would like to carry on my research of the zoom lenses to a 4 lens system. A four lens system would naturally introduce more system parameters. So with more parameters, I would expect to achieve a higher zooming with respect to the same field of view and similarly a higher field of view with respect to the same zoom ratio I achieved with a three lens system. To make a person with no knowledge in optics understand the compromise between the zoom ratio and the field of view, I would have to be creative in the way I would represent them in plots. I will meet up with my faculty sponsor frequently in order to get this project finished by the deadline and set deadlines for every task that I will break up my project into. All in all this should be a challenging project and I will thoroughly enjoy working on it.
Stress engineering for free-standing SU-8 2002 thin film devices
(2013-03) Oliver, Kyle; Dickensheets, David
In this paper we describe a process for creating thin SU-8 2002 films between 1.5 μm and 3.0 μm thick that are hard-baked and can withstand a release etch in either aqueous or plasma silicon etchants. Resulting films are characterized using both wafer bow and membrane bulge tests to monitor in-plane stress and Young’s modulus. We explore the influence on final film stress of several process variables including hard bake temperature, exposure dose, film thickness, and various temperature profiles. We observe resultant film stress in the range of 13.8 to 32 MPa, and Young’s modulus in the range of 2.1 to 5.2 GPa for free-standing membranes. Illustrative process recipes are described for both patterned and un-patterned SU-8 2002 membrane devices.
Computer Vision in Underwater Navigation Systems
(2013-03) Mondl, Sarah; Shirley, Jesse; Abraham, Dylan; Lloyd, Hunter
The use of computer vision in navigation, especially navigation in underwater environments is directly dependent on the quality of the images and the ability of the computer to process them accurately. The unique conditions of underwater environments provide a particular challenge in image analysis as glare, light scattering, and particulates in the water can cause interference in pattern recognition. The computer vision system being tested focuses on navigating an underwater competition course that requires the use of path, shape and color recognition. To accomplish this, the robot is tested on a mock course, located in the university pool, which is designed to mimic the conditions found at the competition, and also tested on images obtained from the course in previous years. The algorithms used in this system heavily utilize the open source library Open CV and the code is written using C++ to minimize compatibility issues with the rest of the submarines operating platform.

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