Hump Week - Ayon Mitra

Our sixth week in Leuven is coming to an end. It’s hard to imagine that we’re over halfway through our internship, but luckily, we still have four weeks left. These past two weeks have been filled with many fun and memorable events. Last Wednesday was the Fourth of July. Although we did not get the day off as many people in the U.S. did, that didn’t stop us from celebrating! After work that day, we held a barbecue right outside Wisteria, joined by imec colleagues and others from Wisteria.

Last weekend, the five of us went to Amsterdam. To get there, we took a Thalys train from Brussels. The train was fast and relatively inexpensive, and most importantly it had wifi and plug points. In Amsterdam we stayed at the Amstel Botel, which as the name implies, is a hotel on a boat. The Botel was accessible via ferry every 40 minutes, even late at night when we arrived there. Although there were not many major landmarks to see at Amsterdam, we visited the famous Van Gogh museum and Rijksmuseum. Besides that, we spent our two days sightseeing the city by foot and tram. 

In between barbecues and international vacations, we still do work at imec five days a week. I had recently been working with Comsol simulations of two-dimensional beam stress and deflection. This entailed manipulating the thickness, length, stress, and material composition of a beam bilayer and attempting to maximize the angle the bilayer bends. After optimizing the angle with the restrictions given (minimum thickness, maximum stress, etc.) I started working with three-dimensional structures to do the same. I’m currently learning how to use Comsol for 3D simulations and attempting to recreate a structure found in the literature.

Tasty chicken wings for our 4th of July BBQ

Visiting the sights in Amsterdam

Honeycomb structure in 3D COSMOL simulation