Bobby Haney

Current: Harvard SEAS Postdoctoral Fellow in Applied Physics

Contact: bhaney@seas.harvard.edu

Bobby Haney started his college education at Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina where he obtained a Bachelor's degree in Applied Mathematics, and then went on to Clemson University in South Carolina where he gained his Chemical Engineering Bachelor degree. Feeling as though the engineering field needed more under-represented mentors at the college level, and inspired by the late Walt Disney, Bobby decided to "keep moving forward." He attended the Ph.D. program at Florida A&M University (FAMU) in the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering with plans to start a career in academia. At FAMU, Bobby studied the fabrication and application of polymer nanocomposites. These composites are filled with iron oxide nanoparticles that not only improve the strength of the material but also makes them susceptible to changes under a magnetic field. As a visiting student in the Weitz laboratory at Harvard University, Bobby fabricated amphiphilic particles that can play the role of surfactants in oil and water solutions. Using the precision afforded with the microfluidic techniques developed at the Harvard MRSEC, Bobby could control the size of the hydrophobic and hydrophilic sections of the particle, which determined whether they were able to form oil in water or water in oil Pickering emulsions. The enhanced stability of these emulsions produced by the amphiphilic particles may lead to a broad range of applications from next-generation, display technologies, like E-paper, to new personal care products.