LET THE SUN SHINE Sand’s research reflects a growing effort to boost solar power’s efficiency while reducing production costs. “Dye cells can be made with impure materials,” Sand says. “Silicon takes a lot of energy and work to get it the way you want it. It needs to be pure, and it means you have to throw stuff out. We can make dye-sensitive cells a lot more easily and inexpensively, but they’re not as efficient.” Sand uses an electron-spinning technique to measure how long electrons last without being attached to an atom. The longer they do, the more efficient the system. Sand’s passion for solar technology blossomed during an internship last summer with DAAD, a German academic exchange service, in the University of Konstanz labs in southern Germany. “I worked in a lab with people from all over the world—Germany, India, Pakistan, China, Hong Kong, Korea, and all over Europe,” she says. “This was a whole team that focused on solar cells, which was amazing to me and what I really want to do.” Sand studies under Martin Kordesch, professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at OHIO, who pegs her as one of the top three students he’s taught in his 26-year career. “We’ve got a lot of good students, but she’s really good. She’s well-adjusted, personable, friendly—and she’s also super smart. She’s the type of student you wish you could have more of,” Kordesch says. MAKING HER MARK Sand worked with a balance of men and women in her field last summer. A 2013 survey by the National Science Foundation indicating that men greatly outnumber women in physics and engineering in the U.S. doesn’t faze the Athens native. “I grew up with my dad saying, ‘You should really be an engineer.’ I grew up in a very liberal college town. I never thought about it.”
Sand’s father, Jim Sand, PHD ’01, is assistant director of West Green with Housing and Residence Life at OHIO. He says her years as a gymnast fueled his daughter’s determination and drive to compete. “She has grown up to be both a wonderful person and an exceptional scholar,” Jim Sand says. “She has accomplished and done more at 21 than what I have at 57. Nancy (his wife and Sara’s mother) and I have loved watching both our daughters grow up to be strong, confident women.” Sara Sand recalls feeling different when she walked into a math classroom full of young men her first year. But her college career has unfolded largely as she had hoped, so she shrugs it off. “It feels nice to be allied with women in your classes,” she says, “but to me, it’s been nice not to sit down next to the only other woman in the class. It makes a difference: [to] sit down among the men.” Not only does Sand hold her own in a classroom among men and women, she also excels at her field across campus. Last fall, she was one of 49 OHIO undergraduates to win a Provost’s Undergraduate Research
PAGE 12: Senior engineering physics major Sara Sand, posing last spring in Emeriti Park, praises OHIO’s Honors Tutorial College for its sense of community, access to professors, and encouragement to apply for opportunities and travel. RIGHT: “I am using a bonding machine to connect contacts from a titanium dioxide sample to do electrical measurements of titanium dioxide, which is used in hybrid solar cells,” Sand explains about her work in a nanostructure lab at University of Konstanz, Germany, in July 2015.
Fund award. She and another student won an award for a project exploring more energy-efficient ways to kill bacteria and viruses during disinfection processes such as water purification. Wojciech Jadwisienczak, PHD ’01, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science in the Fritz J. and Dolores H. Russ College of Engineering and Technology, handpicked the two students, and they conducted research in his lab. “Sara took the lead on this out-of-the-box project and showed a high level of academic maturity and strong desire for new scientific findings,” Jadwisienczak says. “She has, indeed, shown a true interdisciplinary research spirit when collaborating with me and other faculty and students on campus.” Sand says each research apparatus, sequence, and execution—to borrow terms from gymnastics—brings her closer to her life’s work. “My big thing is, I’m kind of an environmental nut,” she says. “That’s what drove me to solar cells. I want to be able to look back and know I contributed something that I really cared about and the impact it would make. I can make a difference there.” —Sally Parker
Photo by Inka Reiter, University of Konstanz
fa l l 2016
• 13