Research and Time are Like Oil and Water: Hard to Mix and Hard to Separate

Tran, Jenna L.; Dursun, Elif B.; Jin, Hanxun; Payton, Eric J.

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Research and Time are Like Oil and Water: Hard to Mix and Hard to Separate Open Access Deposited

Date Uploaded: 10/26/2026
Date Modified: 10/26/2026

Ten weeks spent designing 3D-printable filters that separate oil from water using geometry and machine learning, no chemicals, no machinery. This isn't a highlight reel. It's the real story of a project still in progress: failed simulations, a constant back-and-forth with a graduate student to run analyses for me, and long nights when everyone else was asleep. Jenna Tran, a junior at California Polytechnic State University Pomona, describes what research looks like while it's happening.

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