CURRENT DISSERTATION FELLOWS - 2009-2010 Danielle Dirks Sociology UT Austin: Department of Sociology   Danielle Dirks' dissertation, American Capital Punishment and the Promise of Closure, examines the rise of "closure" as a contemporary rationale for the American death penalty over the past two decades. Sangheon Lee Chemical Engineering UT Austin: Department of Chemical Engineering   Sangheon Lee studies the structure and dynamics of defects and defect-dopant complexes in the silicon substrate as well as at the interface with gate oxide. His research also focuses on explaining and predicting the synthesis and structure of silicon nanoparticles embedded in amorphous silica, because of their technological relevance and potential in nanocrystal memories and optical interconnects. He uses first principles based atomistic modeling.