Congratulations to Cassie Frueh (PhD in 2017) on two major achievements! First and foremost, she just had her second daughter Sylvie on the 6th of September. Secondly, she was also recently promoted to manager of the computational analysts at Almatis as well as the manager of their innovation process.
Dr. Liu’s Talk on Entropy at the AFLOW Seminar Series
where the term “zentropy” was suggested by Josiah Roberts during the discussion at 1:00:00
Dr. Liu’s Talk on Entropy at the AFLOW Seminar Series
Congratulations to Brandon for Defending His PhD Thesis
Congratulations to Brandon for successfully defending his PhD thesis this afternoon and becoming our #30 PhD graduate. In the near future, Brandon will be joining Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to continue doing great science there.
Congratulations to Greta on Her Son!
Congratulations to Greta (Postdoc ’15) and Oscar for their first son August Bedoya Lindwall born on July 31.
Congratulations to Chelsey on her ASM Bronze Medal Award
Congratulations to our alumnus Chelsey Z. Hargather (PhD 2012), currently an assistant professor at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. Chelsey will receive a Bronze Medal Award from AMS “for technical contributions to materials science and engineering through dissemination of her scientific work and graduating students; and for developing herself and her students professionally through her service to ASM.”
Read more about her and other awardees here.
Richard's CALPHAD Young Leader Award
Richard Otis (PhD 2016) received the 2021 CALPHAD Young Leader Award. Congratulations, Richard!
Congratulations to Laura on her Child
Congratulations to Laura Jean Lucca Weidman (BS, 2010) and Nick for their second child, Nicholas James Weidman, Jr., born on Sunday, 6/6, 2021! Wish their family of four all the best!
Congratulations to James for ASM Trustee Position
Congratulations to Dr. James Saal (PhD 2010) on being nominated as a trustee for the ASM International Board of Trustees for a three-year term where he will help direct the affairs of the society and establish the society's purpose, goals, and objectives. James is currently the Manager of External Research Programs at Citrine Informatics.
Congratulations to Greta for Docent Position at KTH
Congratulations to Dr. Greta Lindwall (Postdoc 2013-2015) for becoming a Docent in Materials Design for Additive Manufacturing at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.
Chelsey's NSF CAREER Award
Congratulations to our alumna Chelsey Hargather (Ph.D. 2012) on receiving the prestigious NSF CAREER award that will fund her proposal on An Efficient First-Principles Method for Calculating Deformation Properties, Diffusivity, and Secondary Creep-Rate Behavior in BCC High-Entropy Alloys. Chelsey is currently an Assistant Professor at New Mexico Tech. Details about her proposal can be found here.
Bi-Cheng's NSF CAREER Award
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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