Julien Leclerc

Background

About Julien Leclerc

My primary background is electrical engineering and more specifically the application of High-Temperature Superconductors. I started studying these materials during my Master’s internship, in 2010, at the CEA of Saclay in France (Center of Research for Atomic Energy). I developed, built, and tested a magnetometer to measure the first critical field of superconducting materials at 1.8 K. I started a Ph.D. in 2010 at the GREEN laboratory (Group of Research in Electrical Engineering of Nancy) of the University of Lorraine (France). My thesis is titled “Methods and tools for electric and magnetic characterization of High-temperature superconductors.” I developed and tested two new methods of characterization aiming to obtain relevant characteristics for the design of practical superconducting applications. After obtaining my Ph.D, I joined the team of Dr. Philippe Masson at department Of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Houston. I worked on the design of an experiment to test YBCO superconducting racetrack coils at 30 K in self-field conditions. The experiment allowed us to test these coils for current value up to 700 A. At the same time, I developed a tool to estimate the AC losses in superconducting filaments subjected to an AC transport current and an elliptical magnetic field. This model was implemented in the NASA software AMBER which is used to design and optimize electrically powered planes. I am currently working as a post-doctoral researcher in the Robotic Swarm Control Laboratory lead by Dr. Aaron Becker at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the University of Houston. My researches focus on the magnetic actuation of millirobots using MRI scanners. The goal is to perform the navigation of millirobots inside human blood vessels to perform minimally invasive surgery or deliver drugs. An MRI scanner will be used to both propel the robot and obtain images of the surrounding area.