User:Brian Volk

Brian Volk is a senior in high school in Tucson, AZ. He has a high school level knowledge in biology and chemistry and a college level understanding of the mechanics area of physics. He is currently taking an organic biochemistry course, an AP Calculus BC, an AP Statistics, and AP US Government and Politics. He is an avid reader and gets very focused on a specific subject. He enjoys doing research and reading primary sources for research, rather than relying on distilled versions. His interests range from quantum computing to smallpox to optical frequency combs. He has had discussions related to these subjects with some of the heads of the scientific community, most notably Bill Philips. He is an avid computer gamer/geek and spends lots of his free time alternately reading articles on Scientific American and playing Call of Duty 4. He is a highly skilled computer user. Work/Research experience Last year he worked in the Energy and Fuel Cell Laboratory at the University of Arizona on a failed senior design project. It was previously submitted to the EPA’s P3: People, Prosperity and the Planet Student Design Competition for Sustainability under the title of "Power Generation Using Magnetohydrodynamic Generator with a Circulation Flow Driven by Solar-Heat-Induced Natural Convection". The majority of his time working on it was spent fixing design and construction flaws that prevented the successful testing of the device. When repaired, the results from the device indicated that further investigation was needed, but due to a lack of funds the project is stalled. Beginning in the summer of 2009 and ongoing, Brian Volk has been employed as a research assistant for B2 Institute (the scientific research aspect of the Biosphere 2) and the Huxman lab (the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology lab run by the Director of the Biosphere). He worked with graduate students and other research assistants on a variety of projects. He helped a graduate student working in the Santa Rita Experimental Range who was testing the off gassing of VOCs and the relation to cloud and rain formations, as well as assisting middle school teachers perform experiments in the Biosphere.