NAPALI RAYMUNDO

Custom design-build of a car-sized 3D-printer with 5mm nozzle and a pellet hopper. Included design and assembly of 4kW three-phase heated bed.

Operation of a Fadal vertical milling machine for Fulcrum Products, a Providence-based machine shop.

Monitor and instructor at the Brown Design Workshop. Taught courses in woodshop, CNC, and resin printing. Built countless things.

Experimentation with a clay 3D-printer. Files include hand-written G-Code, parametric Grasshopper scripts, and procedural forms.

Traditional school-bus sized Japanese wood-fired kiln. Pieces are fired in a mixed-reduction environment, with ash and flame creating unpredictable surface effects.

Dramatic process where pieces are removed from a gas kiln and set alight in straw mid-fire, forcing glaze reduction and rapid cooling.

Design-build of a point-source carbon capture reactor at Mitico, an early-stage climate-tech startup. I cycled samples of sorbent through flue gas mixtures and analyzed them using X-ray diffraction, FT-IR spectroscopy, and electron microscopy. I developed a desktop application for data analysis to model sorption kinetics.

Engineering internship for Atomics, an early biotech-data startup. Employee #3, I led hardware prototyping. Projects included rapid detection of invisible IR-sensitive dyes, micron-accurate printing system, protocol spoofing, PCB design, and development of data encryption pipelines.

Design-build studio remodel of Brooklyn Heights restaurant. Custom tables, cabinetry, millwork, and bar.

Design-build studio construction of residential kitchen. Custom cabinetry, lighting.

Stone wall building and timber frame construction of Vermont art studio.

PMT Array Test Rig in Cryogens (PATRIC). I sought to optimize the control circuitry of the R11410 Photo-Multiplier Tube for the requirements of the LZ collaboration. After modifying the PMT for field control, runs were conducted evaluating quantum efficiency, collection efficiency, gain, dark rate, and linearity.

Runs were taken in a light-tight cryostat just above LN2 temperatures with N2 backfilled to atmospheric pressure. Test photons were delivered using two pulsed LEDs and a fiber-optic bulkhead. Crucial single-photon light levels were reached with a combination of pulse tuning and statistical methods.

Test equipment, experimental methods, cryostat operation, and control and analysis software were developed and performed by me.

LZ searches for evidence of dark matter through direct detection. The experiment is designed to exclude WIMP (weakly interacting massive particle) dark matter with a mass of 36 GeV/c² and a cross section of 9.2×10⁻⁴⁸ cm² with a confidence level of 90%.

The experiment is a 10-ton liquid xenon time-projection chamber 1 mile underground to reduce cosmic ray interference. Nuclear recoil in the search area produces ~100 photons and ~50 electrons, detected as S1 and S2 signals through xenon scintillation.

The small number of detectable particles from an interaction makes the efficiency of the photodetectors crucial for device operation. Optimizing these PMTs was the core of my research.

My senior thesis documents the full experimental methodology, calibration procedures, and results.