I defended my thesis on Dec. 16th, and the final version has been submitted to the MIT library. An electronic copy is available here:
It is a huge relief to be done! Now I’m a postdoc in the Chemical Engineering department at MIT, working with Martin Bazant on computational modeling of LiFePO4 batteries: http://bazantgroup.mit.edu
This weekend I’m moving out of MIT grad housing to an apartment in Davis Square. I think I would have liked to stay longer in Ashdown House but I’m also becoming disgruntled at the way MIT treats its graduate students. I’m moving out of Ashdown because MIT housing is closing it for renovations and moving all the grad students to a new Ashdown. This way they can pack the old Ashdown full of undergrads and charge the grad students $$$ to live in tiny dorm-sized rooms in the new Ashdown. It’s part of MIT’s larger goal of profiting off grad students as much as possible. Why graduate students want to move to the new building is equally baffling. I’m moving to a much nicer apartment with much lower rent.
Anyway, after I move I’m turning around and leaving on Tuesday to go backpacking in the Sierra-Nevadas for two weeks with Courtney and my family! We’ll try to make blog posts whenever we get the chance. We’re doing a 6 day trip in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, spending a few days in San Francisco, climbing Half Dome in Yosemite, and possibly attempting to climb Mt. Tyndall, one of the 14,000 ft peaks near Mt. Whitney.
I have to shut down my old web server for the move, so I’ve moved this website to my office computer. One downside of living off campus is the lack of high speed internet access.
This spring I took a beginner glass blowing class at the MIT glass lab. I got lucky because there’s always a lot of interest in the class and not much space, and the spots are assigned through a lottery. The class was awesome, although working with glass is much more difficult (and hotter, your arms and hands feel like they’re sunburned when you’re finished) than it looks. Hopefully I will get the opportunity to take another class in the fall. Anyway, we made paperweights, variously glassware including bowls and cups, pumpkins, and got to experiment with color. Here are some pictures of some of my better pieces:
