December 2015 Science Journal

Student Spotlight
Natasha Batalha’s Research and Accomplishments are
Out of This World
Chris Li Awarded Air Products Graduate Fellowship
Natasha Batalha, a third-year Ph.D. candidate
in the dual degree Astronomy and Astrobiology
program in the Department of Astronomy
and Astrophysics, is studying all things “astro.”
Batalha’s research with James Kasting, Evan
Pugh University Professor at Penn State, which
is fully funded through an NSF Graduate Research
Fellowship awarded to her during her
second year, focuses on exoplanet studies with
an emphasis on early Martian climate.
“The idea is that there are these stark water
features on the surface of Mars from a few billion
years ago,
but we have no
idea how that is
possible,” said
Batalha. “Mars
today is a cold, dry place with a thin and tenuous
atmosphere. If Mars, early on, had a thick
atmosphere, though, then it’s possible that
greenhouses gases could have helped to keep it
warm over a prolonged period of time. We are
taking atmospheric models and trying to test
this hypothesis of: was Mars really a habitable,
wet place early on in its history?” Batalha’s
work on early Martian climate was recently
published in Icarus.
Batalha was inspired to pursue science at
a young age by Sally Ride, the first American
woman in space, and jokes that her dissertation
is just an extension of her middle school science
fair project. In addition to her work at Penn
State, she has worked with the Space Telescope
Science Institute to characterize planets outside
of our solar system, called exoplanets, with NA-
SA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Batalha said
that she hopes to use the information that they
learn about the chemistry and climate of planets
in our solar system, like Mars, and then apply
this knowledge in the future when we have
more data on these exoplanets.
Although she came from a well-educated family
in Brazil and had a great education herself,
Batalha recognized that the quality of STEM
education is not the same for everyone and that
even students at good schools can fall through
the cracks. She has taken her passion to help
others receive a good education to the next level
as the founder and president of Learn to Be @
Penn State,
a nationwide,
nonprofit organization
with
the mission of
providing free online tutoring to K-12 students
in underserved communities. In just two years,
the organization at Penn State has provided
over 33,000 minutes of tutoring and is the second-ranked
chapter in the nation. Batalha has
also served as the Girl Scout co-chair of the
Graduate Women in Science (GWIS) organization
at Penn State and has organized STEM
workshops for local middle school girls.
Batalha received her bachelor’s degree in
Physics from Cornell University, where she
also continued her lifelong hobby of dancing.
In addition to her NSF fellowship, she was also
awarded the STEM Scholar Graduate Fellowship
during her first year at Penn State. —
Carrie Lewis
"WAS MARS REALLY A HABITABLE, WET
PLACE EARLY ON IN ITS HISTORY?"
Most of the scientific research done at Penn
State University Park is considered basic research,
so opportunities for graduate students to
experience the process of product development
are rare. However, Chris Li, a third-year Ph.D.
candidate in Chemistry, had the opportunity to
do just that this past summer as part of his internship
at Air Products at their headquarters
in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Li is the recipient
of the 2015 Air Products Graduate Fellowship,
which includes the summer internship, as well
as one year of funding.
As part of his
internship, Li
worked on a research
and development
team
at Air Products making a formulation for metal
etching. “Basically, we were mixing chemical A
and chemical B trying to make a formulation
for etching targeted metal on printed circuit
boards, which have layers and layers of different
metals stacked together. I was involved in
making that and then characterizing it with
electrochemistry,” said Li. Although the process
of metal etching was new to Li, electrochemistry
is something he knows very well, so he was
able to teach others on his team how to use it as
a characterization tool.
Li’s internship was not his first experience
in industry research. After graduating from
the University of California, Davis, with a
bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering, he
worked as a staff engineer at SiGNA Chemistry,
Inc. on a team that designed and built a portable
hydrogen storage battery that, when paired
with a fuel cell, can provide portable electricity
"ELECTROCHEMISTRY IS SOMETHING
HE KNOWS VERY WELL..."
at remote locations for small electronics like cell
phones and laptops. As part of this team, Li was
able to see a product go on the market that had
phenomenal performance, but he wanted to be
able to understand how it worked in terms of the
structure of the reactions that were occurring.
It was then that he decided to pursue a graduate
degree in chemistry to combine his engineering
skills with understanding the fundamentals of
physical science.
As a member of Dr. Tom Mallouk’s lab, Li
works on designing energy application related
materials, such
as sodium ion
batteries. Chris
studies the diffusion
coefficient of
sodium ions using a technique called impedance
spectroscopy, an electrochemical technique that
he uses to probe a series of different structures
of cathode material and compare the diffusion
coefficients to get a structure-property relationship.
The goal is to design a next-generation
sodium ion battery with a faster diffusion coefficient
that will make the batteries cheaper and
just as fast, if not faster, than the lithium ion
batteries we use today.
Outside the lab, Li is an avid runner, running
seven marathons and one ironman race since he
began running about four years ago. The time
management and discipline skills required for
this type of running, as well as earning a Ph.D.,
are ones that he learned as an undergraduate
student as he worked all four years to pay for his
own tuition and expenses. Li is the first member
of his family to obtain a college degree and attend
graduate school.
—Carrie Lewis
56 Penn State Eberly College of Science SCIENCE JOURNAL December 2015
57