Meet Nordin the Croatian Photographer and Materials Scientist

Hello! I'm Nordin Catic and I was born in Croatia but I have lived my whole life in Dubai. I know what you must be thinking, did you go to school riding camels? No, silly, it was flying carpets. Growing up in Dubai, I always wondered how they could build those massive skyscrapers so quickly. Having no knowledge about the materials that make our world, I decided to apply for a Materials Science and Engineering degree at Drexel.

During my time at Drexel, I have gone on three co-ops and have been part of several clubs and research groups.

On my first co-op, my job was to develop a way of dyeing textiles using CO2 instead of water and reusing that CO2 continuously. Every year we pollute trillions of gallons of water just to dye our textiles. This is what my first co-op was trying to fix. Hopefully in a few years this technology will become the norm and we will be able to eliminate one of the largest sources of human-caused water pollution.

My next two co-ops were both at the University of Cambridge in the UK. During my first co-op at Cambridge, I was part of a team that was trying to create a new way to de-ice airplanes. This new method would eliminate the need for costly de-icing fluid and would allow planes to take off during icy and snowy conditions. I'll be going more into my co-ops in a later blog.

In my free time, I love to photograph cities I visit and create interesting timelapses. While on co-op I have traveled to numerous countries and created timelapses in almost all of them. I am working on a Philadelphia video that I’ll share once it is done; until then here is a quick video that I made while I was traveling around Cambridge, London and Amsterdam. www.vimeo.com/nordincatic/coop

Next time I'll be talking about my co-ops in more detail so hopefully you will be back to read it!