April 21, 2016 – Materials for future technology

Grounds for Science

with Sonia Travaglini and Zi Jing Wong

Thursday, April 21 at 6:00 PM at Scarlet City Espresso Bar

Magnificent mushroom materials! 

Join Sonia Travaglini, the world’s first mycology materials researcher, for an introduction to mycology materials; a bio-composite grown from mushrooms. These materials offer reduced environmental impact, are compostable, and are more pleasing to work with than their synthetic alternatives. Along with describing mycology materials’ unusual closed-loop life-cycle, Sonia will introduce their creation, composition and future development.

Sonia Travaglini, a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering, is studying the properties of part of this eclectic kingdom to find new sources for sustainable composites.  Read more about her research (Photo by Noah Berger)

Sonia Travaglini and her mushroom materials

Photo by Noah Berger

 metamaterials

Realizing invisibility cloaks with metamaterials

Zi Jing Wong Is invisibility just a fantasy? Or can be it real? In 2006, scientists finally found a way to build invisibility cloaks. It’s based on a new type of artificially-engineered materials called metamaterials. In this talk, Zi Ling will introduce the concept of metamaterials and highlight the key experimental progress, including some of the research efforts at UC Berkeley.
Zi Jing Wong came from Malaysia. He is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously he graduated from UC Berkeley (Ph.D. in Mech. Eng.), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (M.S. in Aerospace Eng., Best Thesis Award) and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (B.Eng. in Aeronautics, Royal Education Award). He also had short-term research experinces at University of Cambridge, UK and Peking University, China. His research goal is to develop metamaterials with unprecedented optical properties and performances. Read more about research into “Invisibility Cloaks”
 

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