Photo credit: George Ni

Hello. I am an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. For current information on my research, please visit my lab website (Da Kine Lab).

Previously, I was a postdoc at Princeton working in the Datta Lab doing research in the area of soft matter physics. Before that, I was at MIT working in the Device Research Laboratory doing research in the area of phase-change heat transfer.

As an engineer and scientist, I design, build, experiment, analyze, tinker, code, and have a general curiosity about the universe.

Originally from Hawaiʻi, I left the sunshine for cold winters at the University of Michigan as an undergraduate, and then ventured on to Boston to obtain my Master’s and PhD at MIT. Aside from engineering and science, I dabble in various photographic, culinary, and linguistic pursuits.

How can we use and convert energy more efficiently? That, essentially, is the question I seek to answer in many ways through my research. Pretty much all forms of energy usage and conversion involve the movement of heat. And one of the most effective ways to move heat is through phase-change processes like boiling and condensation. This is why the majority of power plants use a steam cycle to convert a heat source (fossil fuel, solar, geothermal, etc.) into electricity. I look at how boilers and condensers can be made to transfer energy more effectively using new materials. You can read some of my thoughts on the matter in a review paper published in Nature Reviews Materials .

Many existing thermal technologies deal only with the three traditional phases of matter: pure liquids, gases, and solids. However, there are a multitude of complex and exciting behaviors when we use non-traditional matter. For instance, we can add molecules called surfactants that change how a liquid wets a surface (think about how water droplets would bead up and slide on a waterproof jacket versus soak a cotton shirt). These surfactants enable control of boiling—even to the point of turning boiling on and off using electric fields. This work was published in Nature Communications and was featured in MIT News, Phys.org, Gizmodo, among other media.

I am continuing to explore non-traditional “soft” matter—such as hydrogels, polymers, surfacants, nanoparticles, and cells—for breakthrough technologies that encompass the energy, environmental, and biomedical spaces. Some projects include include self-healing hydrogel packings (current work), polymer-based condensers for harvesting water out of thin air, and soft actuation of drug delivery reservoirs.

Photography has been a passion of mine for over 15 years. Film, digital, portrait, landscape, I love it all. You’ll find a sample of my portfolio below.