Amelia (Church) Hart, a Henderson State University Physics graduate, was recently featured in an article about creating fibers for the next generation of NASA rocket engines.
Hart, who just received her Ph.D. from Rice University, was a lead researcher in the project. The work is detailed in the American Chemical Society journal Applied Materials and Interfaces.
According to the article, the project began when Hart, who had been studying the growth of carbon nanotubes on ceramic wool, met Michael Meador, then a scientist at NASA’s Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, at the kickoff reception for Rice’s Materials Science and NanoEngineering Department. (Meador is now nanotechnology project manager at NASA’s Game Changing Technologies program.)
That led to a fellowship in Cleveland and the chance to combine Hart’s ideas with those of NASA research engineer and paper co-author Janet Hurst.