Working with Dr. Stephanie Hansen at Sandia National Labs computing dielectric functions and stopping numbers for materials and plasmas that have high temperatures but that are dense enough that quantum mechanics must be considered in the interactions between electrons. Stopping numbers are useful quantities because they can tell us how particles lose energy as they travel through these plasmas. Dielectric functions are important because you can calculate the so-called dynamic structure factor of these warm, dense materials from them. The structure factor can be measured by Thomson scattering, which is one of the experimental probes used at LPS. This provides a nice link between the theory I am doing and the experiments performed at Cornell.