New Lasers Shed Light on Science for Local High School Students in P.U.M.A.

After successfully completing 2 weeks of intensive materials science content and laboratory experiments, P.U.M.A. students have experienced, first hand, what it’s like to work in a laser lab with Princeton University scientist Claire Gmachl. This incredible opportunity is not available in any high school in the country and is made possible by PCCM’s summer outreach program P.U.M.A. (Princeton University Materials Academy.)

P.U.M.A. provides these high school students, most from economically disadvantaged families from Trenton and Lawrence, NJ, with lessons in science far beyond what their high schools can teach them. P.U.M.A.’s first session in 2005, held from July 11 until their final presentations on July 25, focused on the Redesign and Performance of Materials. In this session, students learned from professors like Prof. Claire Gmachl who does research on tiny cutting-edge devices called quantum cascade lasers. P.U.M.A. allows students to explore the properties of materials and ways of manipulating those properties to redesign products for improved performance. What makes the program so unique is that, in addition to interacting with real scientists, the students actually learn about these materials by working in Princeton’s labs performing many of the tests the scientists themselves perform to evaluate properties of plastics, metals, and other materials. P.U.M.A. trains the students to think like materials scientists when dealing with complex concepts to better prepare them for college courses and appreciate science.

This P.U.M.A. session’s students are recruited through a mentoring program called Mentor Power, based out of Lawrenceville, NJ. During the school year, Mentor Power volunteer mentors, when matched with a high school student, commit to a mutually chosen project in which an environmental scientific or technology issue is researched and tested. During the summer, the organization recruits students for programs like P.U.M.A. Mentor Power director Maureen Quinn works closely with PCCM Education Outreach Director Daniel Steinberg to ensure that the science is presented in a way that these students will truly grasp the complex concepts such as polymers' properties, elecsticity of sports matierals, and the quantum mechanics of the lasers in Prof. Gmachl’s lab. In P.U.M.A., students also learn from professors like Rick Register, Jay Benziger, Wolé Soboyejo, Dave Srolovitz, George Shearer, Craig Arnold and Barrie Royce.