Kathryn Harris
About me
I completed my PhD at the University of Florida as a member of W.G. Sawyer's Tribology Lab, where my thesis work centered on the tribological behavior of PTFE. At KTH, my work with Sergei Glavatskih and Mark Rutland is focused on the tribological, chemical, and interfacial behavior of ionic liquids, in particular those synthesized without hazardous halogens.
Recently, I contributed to a submission to Professor Martin Müser's contact mechanics challenge (Science Magazine's summary can be found here), for which we replicated a simulated randomly rough surface via 3D printing, and utilised a Frustrated Total Internal Reflection (FTIR) method to image the real contact area, and a Differential Image Correlation (DIC) technique to measure in and out of plane deformations.
Tribology is a universally applicable science, and is growing rapidly to include the study of increasingly complex surfaces and systems, including those found within the human body. To demonstrate some elements of this complexity, we tackled the famous question, 'How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?' as part of an outreach program. We're on Wikipedia & featured in The Cutting Edge of Tribology!