Halen is a first-year Ph.D. student from Clarksville, Tennessee. Halen received his B.S. in mechanical engineering with a concentration in patent law from George Washington University in Washington, DC. While pursuing his degree, he worked in Professor Santiago Solares’ Scanning Probe Microscopy Lab at GWU, where he studied rheological characterization of soft matter materials. Upon graduation, he worked as an associate research scientist in the Flammability Reduction Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) working for the Public Health Risks to First Responders project and as an intern in the Polymers and Complex Fluids group working for the Fluid Suspensions and Emulsions project. In his spare time, he enjoys reading about politics and industrial engineering.