A $2,000 scholarship was awarded to University of Delaware Materials Science and Engineering graduate student Maryanne Derkaloustian. Working under the direction of Dr. Charles Dhong, Derkaloustian’s research aims to understand the friction mechanisms relevant to human touch, and how to control them through surface chemistry. One of her overarching goals is to design tactile aids with perceptibly distinct sensations without the use of raised bumps or grooves, in order to eliminate tactile clutter and expand accessibility to low vision and blind individuals who are not braille literate. She has found that different types of frictional instabilities, consisting of variations of stick-slip, can occur during touch depending on the sliding velocity and applied pressure of the finger, and the boundaries between them in this parameter space shift depending on the surface. For silane monolayers of indetectable roughness, these classifications of dynamic behavior may serve as reliable predictors of human performance in psychophysical tasks. Part of her experimental work involved preparing hundreds of silicon wafers for testing human perception and pouring over the friction traces to analyze the results. Derkaloustian has a co-first author paper published, and a first author paper accepted for publication.
Dr. Dhong notes that she uses her unique background in both rheology and tribology in her work. He cites her as an excellent leader in the lab who sets a positive culture for all. She is reliable and engaged, willing to share and train new members and generous with her time. She has an artistic streak and has built many things to improve the lab culture: she led the organization of a group retreat, filled a whiteboard with funny moments from the lab and even composed original music about her project. He cites her potential to be an outstanding scientific leader in the field of tribology, given her unusual pace of success and the fact that she represents a core contributor to a positive work environment.