Science Heroes Home Page > Mark Knight

Mark Knight

OMSI: Where were you born? Where did you grow up?

MK: I was born in Portland Oregon, and grew up on a small farm near Scholls, Oregon.

OMSI: What three words best describe you?

MK: Creative, enthusiastic, social.

OMSI: As a child, did you have any hobbies, interests, or experiences that helped prepare you for success in science?

MK: Living on a farm created some wonderful opportunities for first-hand investigation. In 6th grade I "discovered" microbiology by observing diatom and rotofer samples from our stocktank. Levers, too, had slightly different manifestations than the typical classroom demonstration. I built my own atlatl, following an OMSI trip to Camp Hancock, which is a simple lever used to throw spears. Later, in high school, I worked with two other students to construct a 20 foot tall trebuchet capable of hurling five pound steel blocks over 200 feet.

Science was, and is, an adrenaline rush. Hopefully that will never end.

OMSI: Please tell us about a mentor or teacher who helped to inspire your interest in science.

MK: Dr. Jody House was a tremendous inspiration for me. My Junior summer in highschool I was accepted into the Apprenticeships in Science and Engineering (ASE) program with Saturday Accademy, and was honored to work in Jody's lab for eight weeks. While under her supervision, she taught me new approaches to research and engineering, and showed me the real world of inventing.

The work was so exciting that I requested permission to continue after the official internship ended. Jody not only allowed me to stay, but she remained engaged in the project. Just before the science fair one of our experiments was finally ready to run, but neither of us could stand to wait another week. We ordered pizza together, and both stayed at the lab until midnight.

OMSI: What's the worst trouble you ever got into in school? Have you ever blown anything up?

MK: I haven't been caught, yet...

My current goal, however, is to create a Carleton Student Association (CSA) funded organization called Public-Good Reassurance and Nourishment Kitty (PRANK) to stimulate the Carleton spirit and encourage humorous and creative pranking. Specifically, I'm trying to create a front organization to allow purchasing of things like water balloons with school money.

OMSI: Describe a difficult situation that you were in and how you handled it.

MK: In the summer before 9th grade I was on a 20-mile training hike along the Deschutes river with my fellow scouts from Troop 799. One of the boys, who's currently a U.S. marine, turned his ankle on a loose rock and couldn't walk. The hot, dry weather exacerbated the injury, and he was barely able to hobble with a stick. His pack weighted about 50 pounds, which was too much weight for the twisted ankle, but he didn't want to ask anyone else to carry his load.

To keep him moving the other boys and I took away his pack, and took turns carrying it between two of us at a time. Without the weight of that pack, his ankle held up for the remainder of the hike.

The same team I was hiking with that day went to Philmont Scout Ranch later in the summer, and completed 100 miles and 6 mountains in ten days.

OMSI: What is your favorite class this year?

MK: Ordinary Differential Equations, in conjunction with Computational Mechanics. These classes worked in tandem to provide a strong toolbox for approaching difficult modeling problems. By the end of Winter Term, my team was able to independently create a model of Saturn's moon Hyperion to demonstrate the chaotic motion of Hyperion using Poincaré plots. Getting the opportunity to directly apply new skills in an independent project made the material presented in ODEs and Computational Mechanics both exciting and relevant.

OMSI: What is your dream? What do you most hope to accomplish in your career?

MK: I want to understand the world through physics and math, and live a satisfying and constructive career - whatever form that may take.

OMSI: How do you feel about the current state of science education in the U.S.?

MK: I feel like the current emphasis on standardized testing is hindering educators that could otherwise provide novel or exciting journeys beyond the basic course material. The schools need more money and more support from parents and elected officials - not punitive measures designed to threaten our nation's educators.

I believe science fairs can help bridge gaps in the educational system by providing the opportunity to compete can encourage students to develop their own curriculum, and use community resources to learn more than schools can offer.

OMSI: What do you like to do in your free time?

MK: Free time? I think I remember having free time once.

When I anticipate a few unscheduled moments I carry three juggling balls to keep my hands busy, or bring homework along so that I can work. Mostly, however, I keep myself scheduled all day, either with academics or with cooking, clubs and friends.

OMSI: What do you consider your very best skill?

MK: Communication. Whenever I'm working on a difficult problem, being able to write and speak coherently usually proves critical to success.

When I was working on my ISEF project, I was in completely unfamiliar territory. As I began researching prior art, it was critical to be able to identify areas where I needed more information, and hold productive conversations with researchers at the Oregon Graduate Institute (OGI, now OHSU). For example, one such conversation provided a new approach to inexpensive chrome-gold mask fabrication, and let me shrink feature size by an order of magnitude while boosting yield by over 100%.

At NWSE, at the end of the first judging session, a judge attempted to walk past my project. I asked him if he'd like to hear what I'd done - he said, "of course, but I've only got 45 seconds." In the next 45 seconds, I gave him the 'elevator' version of my presentation.

When I was approached by six large, uniformed judges at ISEF, I didn't know exactly what to expect. It turned out these particular special-awards judges were looking for projects relevant to the navy, and were only interested in my micromolding technique for creating small flow-channels. In that case, I had the opportunity to make a 20-minute presentation on a single step of the fabrication process.

I feel like the capacity to adjust content and presentation style has been, and will be, critical to my success in the sciences.

OMSI: Please tell us about your science fair project. How did you come up with the idea for your project? How did you go about researching and building your project? What was it like to participate in the science fair, and what do you remember most from the fair?

MK: The project was originally to create a new type of pump. After researching current needs in the medical community and available pump types, I settled on designing a pump that might be suitable for treating diabetes. Such a pump would have to be biocompatible, small, low power, clog resistant, and have a long lifetime. The potential benefits of this pump-type were significant: enhanced health and a long-term reduction in the pain, inconvenience, and suffering of over 12 million diabetics in America, and millions more around the world.

The design I finally settled on is a three-layer peristaltic pump. The first layer is a set of three small gold resistors sitting on a thin (approx. 5 micron) membrane created by backetching N-type silicon using tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH). The layer above the resistors is created from the elastomer polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), and was patterned with small 'balloons' using micromolding. When a potential difference was applied across a resistor they would heat up, heating the air above them to expand, and cause the balloon to push upward. The expanding balloon pushed into another micromolded PSMS layer, displacing fluid in a channel and creating a seal. By phasing the actuation sequence of three valves correctly, fluid could be pushed through the pump with minimal backflow. The lack of moving parts and use of PDMS created an environment that wouldn't damage biological materials, and could avoid any potential clogs.

As I mentioned, my work was started through an internship at the Oregon Graduate Institute, so I already had access to semiconductor fabrication tools such as an oxidation-diffusion furnace, an aligner, various chemical baths, and a 1960's era metal evaporator. These tools allowed me to become intimately connected to the fabrication of my pump, and serve as engineer, manager, and fab tech.

Testing the completed pump components was actually one of the most difficult parts. I spent months working on characterizing each component. Some of the problems, such as resistor continuity, were resolved after finding deficiencies with the original masks. Some of the other problems, such as etched membrane thickness, continued to provide a challenge for the duration of the project. Figuring out transient response times was the most difficult - I finally ended up raiding other labs to get enough oscilloscopes.

After wrapping up the research stage at OGI, I found that ISEF itself was absolutely thrilling. I had the opportunity to meet other students from around the world and discuss local cultures, other types of research, languages, lifestyles? Then, during the fair, the judges did much more than just judge. They listened to my talk, and then were eager to discuss their views on the work, future career options, ways to extend my experiences, and myriad other things. By the end of judging it appeared that I hadn't only gotten to present - I'd found new friends and colleagues.

OMSI: If you were to build your science fair project again, would you do anything differently?

MK: I would spend more time on the front end defining my goals. While I decided exactly what my project would be, I spent several weeks exploring tangents. Such outside explorations, such as reading about finite element modeling, were interesting, but ultimately they slowed down the research.

If I could redo the project, I would create a document outlining project milestones, and deliverables.

OMSI: Please tell us about your educational plans and goals. Have you had any on the job training or science related work experience?

MK: Carleton College, Northfield, MN September 2003 - March 2004.
Worked as a Writing Assistant to aid students in developing their written communications skills.

Intel Corp, Hillsboro, OR, Full-time June-Aug 2003.
Intel Honors Internship Program (iHIP) Intern - PTD C4 Process Engineering. Assisted in the development of a proprietary chip connect process (C4). Designed, ran and supervised engineering experiments to minimize variation in electroplated structuctures through the optimization of equipment geometry. Used JMP statistical software to create an automated data processing script for use with metrology tools.