Current Research or Professional Activities

FOUNDER & CEO, Covalent Innovation, LLC, Houston, TX, 01/2021 – present date
• Innovation consultant focused on helping companies and projects achieve their technology development goals.
• Thermal modeling, heating, energy source and storage components requirements, and materials selection of individual homeless shelter to be used in Edmonton, Canada (temperature: -40 oC).
• Design and oversee characterization plan for concrete waterproofing admixture in scientific laboratories, including SEM, EDS, FTIR, XRD, and TGA/DSC.
• Research planning and writing of NSF project pitch and SBIR Phase I grant application for A.I. Analysis, Inc.
• Materials selection of polymer for thin-walled injection molding parts of Breakthrough Photography, LLC.
• Molecular dynamics simulations using LAMMPS software of an epoxy-liquid crystal polymer interface.
• Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of the water-air interaction inside and around the geometry of a Cartesian diver commercial product of Strottman toy company.

Publications:

1. Soto, M., Boyer, T.A., Biradar, S., Ge, L., Vajtai, R., Elías-Zúñiga, A., Ajayan, P.M., Barrera, E.V. “Effect of interwall interaction on the electronic structure of double-walled carbon nanotubes”. Nanotechnology 26 (16), 165201 (2015).
2. Soto, M., Esteva, M., Martínez-Romero, O., Baez, J., Elías-Zúñiga, A. “Modeling Percolation in Polymer Nanocomposites by Stochastic Microstructuring”. Materials 8 (10), 6697 (2015).
3. Lozano-Sánchez, L.M., Sustaita, A.O., Soto, M., Biradar, S., Ge, L., Segura-Cárdenas, E., Diabb, J., Elizalde, L.E., Barrera, E.V., Elías-Zúñiga, A., “Mechanical and structural studies on the single point incremental forming of polypropylene-MWCNTs composite sheets”. Journal of Materials Processing Technology 242, 218 (2017).
4. Owuor, P.S., Tiwary, C.S., Koizumi, R, Soto, M., Hart, A.C., Barrera, E.V., Vajtai, R., Lou, J., Ajayan, P.M. “Self-Stiffening Behavior of Reinforced Carbon Nanotubes Spheres”. Advanced Engineering Materials 19 (5), 1600756 (2017).
5. Owuor, P.S., Chaudhary, V., Woellner, C.F., Sharma, V., Ramanujan, R.V., Stender, A.S., Soto, M., Ozden, S., Barrera, E.V., Vajtai, R., Lou, J., Tiwary, C.S. Ajayan, P.M. “High Stiffness Polymer Composite with Tunable Transparency”. Materials Today 21 (5), 475 (2018).
6. Kabbani, M. A., Kochat, V., Bhowmick, S., Soto, M., Som, A., Krishnadas, K.R., Woellner, C.F., Jaques, Y.M., Barrera, E.V., Asif, S., Vajtai, R., Pradeep, T., Galvao, D., Kabbani, A.T., Tiwary, C.S., Ajayan, P.M. “Consolidation of functionalized graphene at ambient temperature via mechano-chemistry”. Carbon 134, 491 (2018).
7. Soto, M., Vajtai R., Ajayan P.M., Barrera, E.V. “Carbon Nanotube Conditioning Part I – Effect of Interwall Interaction on the Electronic Band Gap of Double-Walled Carbon Nanotubes”. Nanotechnology 29 (4), 045701 (2018).
8. Sheth, K.R., White, J.T., Puttmann, K., Waters, D., Soto, M., Bell, M., Aboufadel, T., Heffernan, M.J., Richardson, E., Song, S.H. and Koh, C.J. “Quantifying the forces needed for ureteral stent removal: Initial evaluation of magnetic stent removal devices on benchtop and porcine models”. Journal of Pediatric Urology 16 (5), 596.e1 (2020).