Progress in addressing the simultaneous demands for increasing speed and miniaturization in electrical and computer engineering is to its greatest extent bounded by material stresses under thermal shock. Higher speeds require higher power dissipation, and smaller unit volumes make adequate power dissipation more difficult to achieve. Although there already exists a large body of research concerning endpoint thermal failure in semiconductors, there is little research available on the topic of pre-failure behavior of circuit designs containing semiconductors. Our goal is to subject a circuit containing a semiconductor-based diode to the failure mechanism of thermal shock and test the conductivity of the circuit under drastically changing ambient thermal conditions. We will then use this data to experimentally determine any observable behaviors that qualify as pre-failure symptoms. The resulting observations will be used to determine the efficacy of simulation softwares like LTspice in predicting thermal behavior of a diode circuit under extreme and rapid temperature fluctuations. Our theory is circuit simulation softwares do not account for extreme ambient thermal changes. After completing statistical analysis we will compare the experimental results to simulated results of a duplicate circuit subjected to equivalent temperature parameters and determine if we can reject our theory.

Internet censorship is accomplished through technological means, it is sometimes enforced via automated keyword filtering with a keyword list, implemented on a platform or state level. Individual users who discuss “sensitive” issues online may find their social media posts are made invisible or removed and may even have their accounts shut down. In this project, I experimented with using images as carrier of text data to send sensitive inforamtion over a censored network and made a publicly available data-hiding web tool for this project. A PRNG-based, spatial domain embedding method was used to embed the text data, the carrier image is then sent over a network where a keyword-based censor was detected. The result of the experiment shows that steganography can be used to combat keyword-based internet censorship, which promotes the free exchange of information. 

Understanding the spread of COVID-19 is important to all aspects of our life in this pandemic. The more we know about how COVID is transferred from one person to another the more quickly we can come up with counter-measures and protective practices. One of the key ways we know that the disease spreads is on water droplets expelled as we talk and breathe. The spread of these droplets should match our understanding of the spread of an aerosol, which we here model using Computational Fluid Dynamics. We use the popular CFD platform OpenFOAM to simulate the spread of aerosols in a 3D model of our physics lab room. In conjunction with the computer simulation, we construct a small scale physical model of the lab room, and with the help of a high speed camera and fluorescent dye, we track the actual spread of water droplets expelled into the enclosed space. These comparative experiments help us to understand where the simulated model needs refinement and provide valuable insights into how we can combat the spread of this pandemic.

The COVID-19 shutdown in the states of Washington and New York significantly reduced transportation and cut normal daily activities due to constraints issued by governments. To understand how air pollution was affected during the shutdown, this research studied various air pollutants at two different locations in each state; Seattle and Olympia/Tacoma in Washington state, and New York City and Rochester in the state of New York. Daily averages of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, PM2.5, and tropospheric ozone were collected for each location from 2016-2020, including the months from January through August. A linear regression model with a 95% confidence interval, was built using the 2016 to 2019 data to estimate the monthly averages for 2020 to determine if there was a change in any of the air pollution levels due to the COVID-19 shutdown. While there was no notable difference in most of the air pollution levels during the COVID-19 shutdown, there was a significant drop in nitrogen dioxide levels at all four locations. More surprisingly, carbon dioxide was showing an increase during the shutdown. It is speculated that there are two reasons behind the increase in carbon dioxide. First, carbon dioxide is showing an overall yearly increase during our selected research time interval. Secondly, the biggest carbon dioxide producers are industry and power plants. Due to said constraints and confinements, it is concluded that households' electricity consumption went up. This could be explained by the fact that schools and businesses moved entirely online requiring everyone to participate via video conferencing systems and to operate daily tasks via online platforms. As a whole, this research is significant to the study of climate change and its effects, and mitigation of said effects of climate change.