Peter Renner
Senior in Mechanical Engineering, UAA
I am a senior in the Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering here at UAA. I have lived in Alaska for 12 years now, and before that lived various places in both in the United states and overseas. I graduate at the end of the semester, and will be attending Texas A&M full-time this coming fall. I will be pursuing a PhD in Mechanical Engineering there with the intent to pursue a field in Corrosion Engineering.
Working at the University of Alaska Plasma Science and Engineering Laboratory (UAAPSEL) has given me the opportunity to step out of my field of engineering and work on projects not directly related to my major. Physics as a whole is a deeply fascinating subject to me, and plasma science is no exception. The research accomplished here allows me to work on a variety of projects that are on the forefront of the field of plasma physics.
Over the past several months, I have been researching and designing the hexadecapole structure for a plasma trap. This is a structure where there are sixteen poles as opposed to the usual four used in most previous cases. The parts to construct this have been ordered, so soon I will be building this and testing this in the UHV chamber.