MSE Ph.D. student selected for DOE's Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Program
MSE doctoral student Daniel Hong will be heading to Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) this summer to continue his thesis research thanks to the Department of Energy's Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Program.
In an announcement released on May 1 by the Department of Energy, 87 graduate students from 33 states were selected to "enrich their scientific research by engaging with researchers at DOE national labs, learning from world-class scientists and using state-of-the-art equipment and facilities". Students are selected based on merit and research area, which must address critical energy, environmental, and nuclear challenges.1 Hong's research falls under nuclear challenges and the topical area of Data and Computational Sciences for Materials and Chemical Sciences.
Hong will be researching nanoindentation of NiTi Shape Memory Alloys, processed through various methods, to extract mechanical properties from volumes of material that cannot be tested through more conventional mechanical testing. This research integrates nanoindentation, finite element simulations, and Bayesian inference, or other machine learning methods, to extract the stress strain properties of ion implanted NiTi, otherwise uncharacterizable in a quantified manner. The research at LANL will explore various experimental parameters and methods that could enhance a process of extracting key mechanical properties from indentation experiments. The SCGSR program provides supplemental funds to conduct part of his thesis research.
Hong became interested in materials science during an internship at Sherwin Williams. He was working in the performance coatings division looking at early development of coatings and failure analysis. "I was interested in how the microstructures of the materials influenced coating performance. This led me to the materials science and engineering discipline."
Daniel performs his research on nanoindentation under the direction of and with MSE Professors Peter Anderson, Michael Mills, and Yunzhi Wang. He anticipates graduating with his doctorate in materials science and engineering in spring 2025 and plans on being a researcher at a national lab or in industry. He received his B.S. in chemical engineering at Case Western Reserve University.
1 DOE's Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Program Selects 87 Outstanding U.S. Graduate Students. U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. www.energy.gov/science/office-science. https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDOEOS/bulletins/35824cf. Published May 1, 2023.
