By Emily Hubbell

Alyssa Thomas never realized how much her chemistry research related to Yeliz Celik’s physics research until she attended last week’s NanoForum.

“I study the interactions of water on sapphire, how it absorbs and grows on the surface. In her research, Yeliz is looking at ice from a different perspective,” Thomas said. “The collaboration that could be possible is what makes NanoForum really cool.”

NanoForum is a series of informal research talks given by students to other students with minimal faculty participation. Celik led the first forum, held May 5. She presented her research on Anti-Freeze Proteins to an audience of twenty one physics, chemistry and electrical engineering graduate students.

“The NanoForum is intended to be a meeting for students,” said Sergio Ulloa, professor of physics and astronomy and the program’s coordinator. “We want to get students to communicate across fiends as early and often as possible.”

Celik said she felt comfortable presenting because the audience was full of students who knew what it was like to give research talks. She also emphasized the cross-disciplinary aspect of the forum and the productive student question session at the end.

“Most of the time when people from different fields come together, they give you better ideas and point out things you wouldn’t see,” she said. “Alyssa Thomas is also working with ice, and talking to her after the forum was very helpful.”

Thomas, who will lead the second forum, plans to tweak her presentation so that it builds upon Celik’s talk and draws comparisons between their areas of ice research. NanoForums will be held bi-weekly at 4 p.m on Tuesdays through the rest of the quarter.

“This experience was good for me,” Celik said. “In your first few talks, you’re so nervous. The atmosphere was much more friendly than at a meeting.”