Research

Explanation:

As a graduate student, my studies are to culminate in a dissertation, or thesis, wherein I present new and valuable information to the scientific community. Just before the beginning of this, my fourth year of graduate school, I found an excellent thesis project to do under the "advision" of Dr. Gary Williams. This was a great relief, because I had exhausted the possibilities for my plans A through D and was unsure how Dr. Williams would respond to my proposal. But he accepted me as a student, so now I am working with him to flesh out his theory of the superfluid phase transition.

Vortex-Loop Theory:

I will elaborate more on this in the future, but here's a quick explanation. There is a working theory, or mathematical procedure, that is used to calculate thermodynamic properties of superfluid helium and the phase transition from normal fluid to superfluid. However, it's abstract and a bit cumbersome and difficult to work with. Dr. Gary Williams' theory utilizes an assumption about the physics of this process (that the vortex loops are more important than the spin waves) to simplify the mathematics and calculate more properties more easily. His theory takes a stand on what is the physical mechanism behind the phase transition and so illuminates what is really happening. It also provides a way to simplify analysis by only considering larger "renormalized" vortex loops.

Here are some interesting related links:

Et Cetera:

Survival Guide by Wanda Pratt.
Something to read from phds.org.
Search the UCLA online library catalogues, go get books, and read them.
The Graduate Resource Center has a Summer Dissertation program.