Senior Kim Nguyen describes herself as a "hometown girl," but her research and travels over the past year prove otherwise. This Jumbo from Dracut, Mass., is best known by her friends, acquaintances and professors as the treasurer of her sorority, Alpha Omicron Pi and as a member of the women's intramural hockey team.
But Nguyen, who is double majoring in electrical and biomedical engineering, has also proven her skills as an academic. Since the summer of 2005, which followed her sophomore year, Nguyen has been working in the High Frequency Materials Measurement and Information Center, run by the Department of Electrical Engineering. In September, she presented research she had conducted during the past year at an international science conference in Shanghai, China.
At the conference, Nguyen presented two of her own papers to an international audience of scientists. Her research examined certain properties of various types of household items and containers and attempted to gather information that may one day help authorities distinguish between dangerous and innocuous belongings.
"I also presented three papers on behalf of my colleagues," she added.
"We want to develop something we can use in, say, the postal system, or the airport, where we can just scan through your suitcase and immediately identify if that powder you have is foot powder or anthrax," she said.
When asked about how the experience first took shape, Nguyen laughed, calling her research "kind of something that I just fell into." Her advisor approached her in May 2005 with the opportunity, and she gladly accepted the offer.
Since then, she has been working along with professors, graduate students and other undergraduates on numerous research projects.
"None of it's for class; none of it's for my major," she said. "It's just the kind of thing where I didn't get an internship this summer, and then my advisor was like 'Oh, we need some people to work in my lab,' and I was like, 'That's cool; I'll come.'"
Nguyen's research includes tasks such as measuring properties of household substances commonly mistaken for anthrax and working with different types of rubber, fabrics and glass that may disperse radar signals.
"Every fabric has its own unique set [of properties]," Nguyen said, casually listing such characteristics as absorption coefficient, refractive index and loss tangent. While these may be foreign concepts to most students, they are everyday words for Nguyen.
The complexity of Nguyen's research isn't the only unique aspect of her work, however. Another surprising element is its budget: the Department of Defense funds much of the research.
"Eighty to 90 percent of the jobs for mechanical, chemical, electrical and computer engineers ... will be defense contracting," she said. Most of this research, she explained, directly corresponds to the government's war on terror. As a result, Nguyen acknowledged, politics have often come into play throughout the course of her research.
"Some of the engineers I'm in class with ... have issues. They have concerns with it, and I guess that's something that sort of gets sorted out along the way," Nguyen said.
But for Nguyen, the work is a positive contribution: "What I do could help defend the people who are defending us," she said.
Nguyen said that she was both excited and scared when she first learned of the trip to Shanghai. "I was terrified. I was dead-drop terrified. I'd never traveled by myself," she said, laughing. "Thank God I had a family friend pick me up and drop me off at the airport - if it wasn't for her, I'd still be at that airport."
Nguyen's colleagues, mostly graduate students, had stories from previous conferences, which at times made the anticipation even more intense. When talking about a conference some of them had attended last year in Virginia, "they told me that the only person their age there was, like, 34," she said.
Despite these fears, the trip was a complete success.
"It's weird to fill out on the little form when you're going in [to the country]: 'Are you going here for business or pleasure?' Business? Especially at my age, to be doing anything for business at my age is weird," she said.
But Nguyen wasn't the youngest person at the conference.
"I get there, and there were a lot of people volunteering from the nearby universities, so there were a lot of people my age there," she said.
But Nguyen, who is half Chinese and half Vietnamese, did encounter language barriers.
"It was just strange, because everybody thought I spoke Chinese, which I don't," she said. Fortunately for her, the conference was run in English.
Nguyen said her presentation, which was well-received at the conference, was the main highlight of her trip. Still, her visit to China wasn't entirely about business.
"It was an amazing experience; I'm so sad I'm not there right now," she said. "There's so much to see, and I didn't see half the stuff there."
What she did see, however, included diverse sights such as the iconic Oriental Pearl Tower, the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum and the longest underwater tunnel in the world.
"It was wonderful; I have pictures," said Nguyen.
Now back at Tufts, Nguyen still has other ambitious goals on her to-do list. Among these are finishing her senior design project, which is attempting to apply her microwave electrical engineering research to something that may be able to detect skin cancer.
Nguyen also plans to attend graduate school after she matriculates to obtain a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering.
As for her experience in China, she still has fond memories - and photographs.
"Everyone's been really supportive," she said, "I've tried to stay grounded through it. Everyone's been making a bigger deal about it, which was really sweet."
