Congratulations to our alumnus Bi-Cheng (Ph.D. 2015) on receiving the prestigious NSF CAREER award that will fund his proposal on A Novel Computational Thermodynamics Framework with Intrinsic Chemical Short-Range Order. Bi-Cheng is currently a tenure-track Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia. Details about his proposal can be found here.
Dr. Liu's Q&A with Happy Valley Industry
Dr. Liu recently had a Q&A with HappyValley Industry, the local publication that focuses on Happy Valley and Penn State-related industry, research, manufacturing, startups and more.
Full Article: https://happyvalleyindustry.com/meeting-the-materials-needs-of-industry-4-0/
Congratulations to Frank McGrogan and 2 others...
Our alumnus, Frank McGrogan (BS 2013) received his PhD from MIT (2018) and has been working at SageGlass on the electrochromic smart glass. He is happily married and has a 7-month old daughter. Congratulations on life success!
$1.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E
Team of PennState researchers, led by Dr. Liu, received a $1.2 million ARPA-E grant as part of $16 million in funding recently awarded for 17 projects through ARPA-E’s Ultrahigh Temperature Impervious Materials Advancing Turbine Efficiency (ULTIMATE) program. ULTIMATE teams will develop ultrahigh temperature materials for gas turbine use in the aviation and power generation industries.
Our team will generate alloy property data using high-throughput computational and machine learning models to design ultrahigh-temperature refractory alloys employing a neural network inverse design approach, where the needed functionality and property are specified first, followed by identification of the materials that exhibit the desired properties.
Congratulations to XiaoYu Chong
Congratulations for the new milestone in life. Today, our colleague XiaoYu Chong has become a proud father of Xingxing who is the boy depicted in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1 Xiaoyu’s Son Xingxing
Dr. Liu Receives the Endowed Dorothy Pate Enright Professorship
Dr. Zi-Kui Liu has been selected to receive the Dorothy Pate Enright Professorship. This is an endowed professorship that was gifted to the department by our late alumna Dorothy Pate Enright. Dorothy received her M.S. in Ceramic Science in 1948 and went on to have a productive career in the oil and gas industry at a time when there were few women working in this field. Dorothy was featured in the Alumni Spotlights for a MatSE newsletter on the Department website.
The full story on the award can be found in the article Zi-Kui Liu named inaugural Dorothy Pate Enright Professor on the Penn State News website.
Adam Passes His Candidacy Exam
Congratulations to Adam Krajewski for successfully passing their Candidacy Exam!
Our Article on the Cover of APL Materials
Our article on “Suitability of binary oxides for molecular-beam epitaxy source materials: A comprehensive thermodynamic analysis” has been selected as a featured article and made its way to the August cover of the APL Materials 8, 081110 (2020)
Our Alumnus Yong-Jie Becomes a Professor at Drexel
Congratulations to our alumnus Yong-Jie Hu (PhD, 2016) for starting as an assistant professor at Drexel University on January 1, 2021. We wish him all the best in his new career.
PyCalphad Success in NASA SOY Competition
Congratulations to Brandon and Richard Otis for having PyCalphad be the runner-up (2nd place) in NASA Software of the Year (SOY) competition. Earlier this year, PyCalphad won the internal competition in JPL and qualified for the NASA SOY competition!
Read PennState News article:
Penn State scientists take second place in NASA software competition
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Brandon Receives Graduate Research Excellence Award
Brandon was one of six graduate students in the MatSE department recognized with the Robert E. Newnham Award for Research Excellence
John Receives DOE Fellowship
Congratulations to John for being selected to join the DOE National Nuclear Security Administration Stewardship Science Graduate Fellowship program. He is one of five other students to join the DOE NNSA SSGF in 2020-2021 Class.
Our Alumni Organize Symposium at IMAT2020
Our Alumni, James Saal and Richard Otis organize PSDK and Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Symposia at IMAT2020. Please follow this link to learn more.
PRL Meets at TMS 2020
Dr. Liu and Brandon met with PRL alumni and collaborators at the TMS 2020 Annual Conference in San Diego. See our photos!
Adam Receives the STT Scholarship
Congratulations to Adam who has recently received a grant from the Stiftelsen för Tillämpad Termodynamik (STT) to attend the CALPHAD 2020 conference in Tallberg, Sweden this May.
Brandon Receives The Larry Kaufman Scholarship
Congratulations to Brandon who has recently received the Larry Kaufman Scholarship to attend the CALPHAD 2020 conference in Tallberg, Sweden this May.
Congratulations to Melissa
Congratulations to the first BS student in our group Melissa Marshall, CPA for being promoted to Vice President - Global Internal Audit at Westinghouse Electric Company
Congratulations to Hongyeun
Congratulations for the new milestone in life. Today, our Postdoctoral Researcher Hongyeun has become a proud father of Jayden whi is the boy depicted in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1 Hongyeun’s Son Jayden
Dr. Liu's ASM Presidential Speech
During the ASM Annual Business Meeting in Portland, gave a presidential speech outlining his Strategic Plan for the ASM future. Please follow this link to read an excerpt of the speech.
Congratulations to our Alumnus Cassie for Having Her First Baby
Congratulations for the new milestone in life. Cassie’s daughter Thea is a happy and healhy girl depicted in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1 Cassie’s Cute Daughter