CNST High School Intern Parakh Jain Selected as Semifinalist in Intel Science Talent Search

Parakh Jain, a senior in the Math, Science, and Computer Science Magnet Program at Poolesville High School and student intern in the Electron Physics Group in the CNST, has been selected as a semifinalist in the Intel Science Talent Search.  Parakh was one of 300 semifinalists selected from 1744 applicants to the Intel Science Talent Search, a yearly competition to identify talented young scientists.  Parakh’s application described calculations of the transport properties of multilayer graphene performed in collaboration with NRC Postdoctoral Research Associate Shaffique Adam and NIST Fellow Mark Stiles.  Graphene is a single graphitic sheet of carbon and promising new electronic material, and recent measurements and calculations have described samples composed of several sheets stacked on top of each other.  The composite layers are typically referred to as multilayer graphene, and there a several different ways to stack them on top of each other, with the electronic structure of the multilayers depending strongly on the stacking sequence.  Parakh’s calculations address the question of whether it would be possible to use transport measurements to identify the stacking sequence of a multilayer in the presence of typical experimental disorder.  He found that it would take exceptionally clean samples to be able to do so.  These calculations have recently been submitted for publication in Physical Review B with Parakh as a coauthor.