While summer is often a time to relax and recharge, junior mechanical engineering student Raymond Johns is spending his summer recharging in a different way—through battery research.  

This summer, Johns is working as an undergraduate researcher in Associate Professor Damoon Soudbakhsh’s Dynamical Systems Lab. While he has previously shadowed a PhD student to get an idea of the lab environment, this is his first formal experience with conducting research. 

With his work in the lab being vastly different from his time as a rides unit supervisor intern at Six Flags Great America last summer, covered by Temple Now, Johns spoke with the College of Engineering to share his experience as an undergraduate student researcher. 

College of Engineering: What is your research focus within the Dynamical Systems Lab? 

Raymond Johns: The focus of my work within the lab so far has been to expand the research that has been done with lithium-ion batteries to include more data from other types of batteries. The data that has been collected can be used to determine the quality of the battery without having to run hundreds of test cycles, greatly increasing the effective battery life. My work is focused on time-domain data, analyzing how batteries degrade as they are cycled between fully charged and discharged. 

COE: How did you get your position as an undergraduate researcher? 

Johns: I learned about the opportunity to work in this lab through the engineering career development team. Mike Madera, director of career and professional development at the college, reached out to me to share the opportunity, and I looked into the lab to see what kind of work they were doing. The research they were doing interested me, so I reached back out to Mike with my resume, and he sent it in for me! 

COE: What do you enjoy most about being a student researcher? 

Johns: I enjoy that I can contribute to something in an academic setting that hasn’t been done before. The idea that my work could impact academic literature is intriguing and seeing that the work I do could have an impact on the future of rechargeable batteries is very exciting. Additionally, the ability to set my own schedule and get work done at the times that work best for me has been very accommodating. 

I also have self-agency planning exactly what steps need to be done. I typically meet with the professor, and we discuss what the next goal is and some ideas on how to reach it. However, I ultimately make decisions about how to organize my time and the exact steps I want to take to complete the task. 

COE: How do you hope to grow as an engineer while working as a researcher? 

Johns: I think that so far, my experience working with MATLAB over the last few weeks has helped me improve my confidence in my ability to write and analyze code, which is a skill I expect will be important in my near future as an engineer. 

I hope to continue to improve my code reading and writing skills, as they could definitely use a bit more work. Additionally, I’m hoping to improve my communication abilities with the professor I am working with over the course of the summer, as well as improving my time management skills through prioritizing pressing tasks and staying on top of the assignments given to me. 

COE: What advice do you have for students considering research? 

Johns: My main piece of advice for students considering research is that you do an initial search into what research professors are doing, both in your department and not, and find one that interests you. Reach out to them and show interest in their research and ask them to learn more about what they’re doing! Professors love to talk about what they do outside of class time, so ask if you can learn more about what it is they do and if you can contribute to their lab or shadow the work that’s being done. 

Also, Temple has a lot of great resources and opportunities for you to participate in research as an R1 university. There’s a lot of interesting work being done, don’t limit yourself to just the College of Engineering! If you think you might be interested in participating in research, look through the departments, and even other colleges, at what professors are doing and see if any of their work aligns with your own interests!