Career Development

Join us for our February Lunch & Learn where you'll be treated to talks by students from Mechanical Engineering and Global Studies! Enjoy free lunch and a chance to socialize with grads from across campus. RSVP today!

Tuesday, February 4th, 2020 - 9:20am


Join us for our ​​​​​February Lunch & Learn featuring talks from students from Mechanical Engineering and Global Studies! Lunch & Learn is co-sponsored by the Graduate Division, the Graduate Student Association, and the UCSB Library. ​Feed your mind and your stomach while socializing with grad students from across the campus! RSVP here.

Lunch & Learn
This Edition: Impurities and Insecurities

​Friday, February 14
Noon-1 p.m.
Library, Room 1312 (map)
*To ensure we have enough food, ​please RSVP*

From Drag Reduction to Maze Solving: The Physics of Surfactants

Fernando Temprano-Coleto
Graduate Student in Mechanical Engineering

Any liquid, be it in a living organism, an engineering system, or the environment, contains at least trace amounts of surfactants. These substances are natural impurities that tend to migrate to the interfaces between different fluids, where they trigger complex phenomena. For instance, surfactants are, even in very small amounts, a major obstacle for state-of-the-art drag reduction technology, and they also have recently been shown to display fascinating maze-solving behavior which could be harnessed in biomedical applications. I will be speaking about these two subjects of my research, which is aimed to improve our understanding, prediction and utilization of surfactants for technological purposes.

The Pornographic Production of Global Insecurity

​Eugene Riordan
Graduate Student in ​​Global Studies

What are the uses of pornography in identity politics and as a reflection of cultural insecurities? Can these sentiments be taken up by larger projects of power and spectacle in the fulfillment of national goals? By establishing adult films and other erotic literature as evidence, this project looks at several global sites where an examination of such evidence reveals larger projects of power that use insecurities to mask conflict or further violent goals of statemaking.

This event will be moderated by​ ​Hannah Lawrence, the Assistant Director of Professional Development for the UCSB Graduate Division.

Interested in being a presenter at an upcoming Lunch & Learn? Click here to find out more! If you have any questions about this event or Lunch & Learn in general, please email Daina Tagavi.