 Our next presenter is Charles Sharkey whose three-minute thesis title is using confined bubble flow to construct designer forms Imagine opening a can of soda Soon after you snap open the top and try and drink from it. You're gonna be greeted by a flurry of bubbles For better or for worse though their existence is fleeting because the bubbles are gonna rise to the surface and burst But what if I can tell you there are bubbles that actually persist for months? What you're looking at behind me are air bubbles This may be a little bit strange and surprising Since we generally expect air bubbles to be spherical Take for example children blowing bubbles in a park every time one of them dips a wand into the soapy solution and blows a bubble It's always gonna be spherical and delicate My research is focused on producing rigid non spherical bubbles The secret to doing this is in the liquid I use and the process I use to make these bubbles Instead of using a bottle of soapy water the kids will buy at a pharmacy or a toy store I use a suspension of nanoparticles these particles are special though on the surface. They're coated with soap like molecules Instead of using a wand I use a long narrow capillary tube that's filled with the suspension of these particles as A bubble flows along the length of the tube the particles will stick to the surface and I have found they actually form a rigid layer This is important because this rigid layer on the surface of the bubble Gives it the ability to take on these cool non spherical shapes when it exits the tube I can control the bubble shape and also its mechanical properties by varying different parameters like how fast it moves through the tube Or even the concentration of the suspension I can also do this with different types of particles making this a pretty versatile process however To utilize the full potential of these bubbles we need to think big. I'm talking about larger collections of them or foams Foams can be made of simple soap bubbles like when you're washing the dishes or they can be made of bubbles coated with particles similar to what I use Now these foams that are made of particle coated bubbles are actually pretty important because they can be turned into porous ceramics The ceramics are made in a way such that those bubbles in the starting foam end up becoming the pores in the final Ceramic and can affect its mechanical properties My bubbles in my process could provide a way to tune the mechanical properties of that ceramic by controlling the bubble shape in the initial foam These designer foams that I'm working to produce Could potentially lead to a new class of lightweight materials with applications ranging from ballistic protection To even heat shielding on spacecraft. Thank you