FALL 2025 INTERDISCIPLINARY PROJECTS
The Materials + Expression x Technology + Art Lab (META) invites students from all disciplines and levels to join the following academic projects for Fall 2025. Selected students will receive three chemical engineering independent study credits and will be working closely with the principal investigator Prof. Abhishek Sharma.
All projects involve thinking across disciplines – art, engineering, and humanities – and will involve working with a collaborator outside of ChE. No pre-requisites, but skills suitable for the individual projects are preferred. The exact plan of work, such as hours and deliverables, will be developed in discussion with the advisors. Interested students should reach out to abhishek.sharma@cooper.edu.
METASTABILITY
With Carlos Irijalba (Arts)
We are surrounded by metastable forms that appear stable for a short time but eventually deform into unstructured material over longer periods of time. Consider foams, an ephemeral form that emerges in soap lather, meringues, and effluent ridden river streams. These materials contain multitudes – a fractal of faceted polyhedral cells that reflect, refract, and diffract light in ways. What if we made foams that were frozen in time? We wish to achieve this through a “trick” of scales used by nature, constructing a macroscopically disorderly foam out of resin that is hardened at the molecular level into an orderly solid in a bottom-up approach. The emerging foams are known for high strength to weight ratio due to their porous structure. The process would yield exposition of microscopy and instrumental analysis perform in the engineering lab, complemented by visual feedback and iteration. The project will involve optimization of chemical reactions, flow systems, mechanical characterization, and image analysis. The resulting materials will be directly used in sculptural work that seeks an appearance of soap lather and/or chemical effluent.
CONVERGENCE: ELECTROLYSIS SCULPTURE
With Harrison Tyler (AACE Lab)
In an exercise to draw connections between the scientific and the creative, META and AACE labs will work together to produce a sculptural installation exploring the phenomenon of controlled electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. As a sculptural medium, water is a material essential for life, is representative of mathematical exactness, and can undergo chemical transformation and accrue energy potential by electrolysis. The project will draw from competences in flow systems, reaction control, fabrication, safety, and iterative design. The students are expected to engage in a deep exploration of concepts related to the project - engineering, scientific, and artistic. By the end of this project, the hope is to create a sculpture that would not be possible without the interdisciplinary approach and document the interdisciplinary experience.
MORE LIGHT THAN HEAT
With Robin Simpson (HSS)
The transfer of heat is fundamental to our human condition. We go through great efforts to maintain homeostasis. As we face increasingly extreme weather, we must renegotiate our relationship with heat. More Light than Heat is a cross-disciplinary project between humanities and chemical engineering faculty on enhancing what we know about and how we come to know heat. This project emerges from the activities of the ChE 342 (Heat Transfer, Spring 2025) juniors and their experiments with thermal cameras. Exploring conventional heat transfer processes — heaters, insulation, and air-conditioners— alongside the everyday thermal dynamics of the human body, cooking, and even Central Park’s ducks, students glimpsed the ubiquity of heat transfer, its role in structuring our lives, and the critical importance of its manipulation for climate mitigation. Building on this successful activity, we aim to broaden its scope by inviting interested and engaged students to generate active, holistic, and critical understandings of heat. Over the course of the project students will work with faculty to pursue scholarship on the often overlooked social, psychological, political, planetary, aesthetic dimensions of heat. The students will synthesize their work into an event at Cooper along with a document presenting their observations to the broader community.