Department News

September 2006

• Stephen D. Sintay was awarded "best poster of the conference". Doctoral Student, Stephen D. Sintay (with R.Campman, G. Welsh, E.L. Anagnostou, J.M Papazian, A.D. Rollett), was awarded "best poster of the conference" for "Grain orientation influence on matrix crack initiation in AA7075-T651," during the International Conference on Fatigue Damage of Structural Materials VI: Sponsored by the International Journal of Fatigue.
  
• Michael Gao's recent paper was just awarded the "APDIC Best Paper Award". MSE Research Associate, Dr. Michael Gao's recent paper entitled "Reassessment of Al-Ce and Al-Nd Binary Systems Supported by Critical Experiments and First-Principles Energy Calculations" and published at Metall. Mater. Trans. A 36A (2005) pp3269-3279, was just awarded the "APDIC Best Paper Award" for the best published manuscript on alloy phase diagram data in the year 2005. Co-authors on the paper were N. Unlu, G. J. Shiflet, M. Mihalkovic and M. Widom. APDIC stands for Alloy Phase Diagram International Commission. This paper was done with partial financial support from Computational Materials Science Network, a program of the Office of Science, US Department of Energy.
  
   
• Professor Richard J. Fruehan selected as an Honorary Member of AIME. In recognition of his life-long commitment to the iron and steel industry through distinguished service to AIME, ISS and AIST, and for his exceptional contributions to the fundamental knowledge of iron and steelmaking and to the development of new steelmaking technologies, Professor Richard J. Fruehan, US Steel and University Professor has been selected by the Board of Directors of the Association for Iron and Steel Technology (AIST) and ratified by the AIME Board of Trustees as an Honorary Member of AIME.
  
  AIME Honorary Membership is one of the highest honors that the Institute can bestow on an individual. It is awarded in appreciation of outstanding service to the Institute or in recognition of distinguished scientific or engineering achievement in the fields embracing the activities of AIME and its Member Societies. Candidates for Honorary Membership are generally (1) members of the AIME Member Societies who are outstanding in their respective fields and/or who have performed unusual service to the Institute; (2) United States citizens, whether AIME Member Society members or not, who are particularly outstanding; or (3) citizens of foreign countries who are outstanding in their work combined with some official position of service to the profession.
  
  This honor is given to only one tenth of one percent (0.1%) of the members of member societies of AIME, which includes Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society, Association for Iron & Steel Technology and the Society of Petroleum Engineers.
  
  Ceremonial medallion and certificate of honorary membership will be awarded to Professor Fruehan in May 2007 at the Annual AIST Meeting in Indianapolis.
  

August 2006

• Professor Sridhar Seetharaman has been awarded the POSCO Faculty Development Professorship in Materials Science and Engineering effective July 1, 2006. Seetharaman received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1998 and then spent a year as a research associate at Imperial College in London. He first came to CMU as a visiting scholar in 1999 and was appointed as an assistant professor in 2000. In 2005, he was appointed as Associate Director of the Center for Iron and Steel Making Research here at Carnegie Mellon.
  
  His work has already received extensive recognition. The Iron and Steel Society has recognized him with the Young Leader Award in 2000 and the Charles H. Herty Best Paper Award in 2002. In 2002 he also received the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Prize from the von Humboldt Foundation and the Marcus A. Grossmann Young Author Award from ASM International. In 2004 he received the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation and the Philbrook award from the MSE department. He is the principal editor for AIST transactions and has taken a leadership role in organizing a number of international conferences. He has published more than 100 papers, with 63 in archival journals.
   
• MSE doctoral student, Christopher Roberts has been named the 2006 International Symposium on Superalloys Scholar by TMS. The award, which carries a $2,000 cash award is available to undergraduate and graduate students majoring in metallurgical and/or materials science and engineering with an emphasis on all aspects of the high-temperature, high-performance materials used in the gas turbine industry and all other applications.
   
• MSE Senior, Nicole Cates has been awarded the TMS Electronic, Magnetic & Photonic Materials Division Gilbert Chin Scholarship. The 2,000 cash award is available to an undergraduate student studying subjects in relation to synthesis and processing, structure, properties, and performance of electronic, photonic, magnetic, and superconducting materials as well as materials used in packaging, and interconnecting such materials in device structures.
   
• Dr. Robert Heard Receives FeMET INITIATIVE'S DESIGN GRANT The American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) and the Association for Iron & Steel Technology Foundation's (AIST Foundation) “Ferrous Metallurgy Education Today,” or FeMET Initiative, which is aimed at attracting top talent to the North American steel industry, has awarded its design grants for 2006. Teams of materials science engineering students and their professors from Carnegie Mellon University and University of Missouri-Rolla have been granted $47,500 each to put toward their efforts in addressing an industry technological problem or “challenge” by working collaboratively to determine how the problem is best solved. Their proposals included exposure to important problems in the steel industry, as well as learning various technical and economic aspects in creating a solution. Click here to learn more.

May 2006

• Dr. Robert Heard awarded Wimmer Faculty Fellow The Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence has announced the Wimmer Faculty Fellows for 2006. This new fellows program, established by a grant from the Wimmer Family Foundation, is designed for junior faculty members interested in enhancing their teaching through concentrated work designing or re-designing a course, innovating new materials, or exploring a new pedagogical approach. Fellows will participate in a workshop series in May and then work on developing materials for their own courses during the summer, in consultation with Eberly Center staff and colleagues.
  Click here to learn more.

March 2006

• Kumta's Group Recognized A recent publication in Supercapacitors by Professor Prashant Kumta and his research group is featured in Advanced Materials and also featured on the cover. Click here to learn more.
  
  Kumta's group paper on nanostructured calcium phosphates in the first issue of Acta Biomaterialia is noted as the most downloaded article since January 2005. Click here to learn more.

• Professor Newell Washburn receives a 3M Nontenured Faculty Award Newell Washburn, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering has received a 3M Nontenured Faculty Award to support his basic research on biointeractive polymers for wound healing. His was one of 27 awards for basic research in the physical and/or biological sciences selected by 3M researchers. The award provides unrestricted funds for his research.
  
  

  Washburn's group develops biomimetic matrices for tissue engineering. He uses spectroscopic methods to study therapeutically effective biological materials such as demineralized bone matrix, a biological material obtained from cadavers that is used to treat patients with damaged bone tissue. Demineralized bone matrix is rich in proteins known as growth factors as well as proteins that regulate the activity of these growth factors. Understanding the dynamic interactions of growth factors with demineralized bone matrix is key to creating a successful synthetic matrix.

  
  

  Washburn's research centers on performing physical measurements, including fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, to measure the dynamics of growth factors as they interact with the demineralized bone matrix. His group measures the dynamics of powerful signaling molecules in these materials. With these measurements as design criteria, they then synthesize functional equivalents incorporating novel ligands for tuning interactions between signaling molecules and engineered matrices. Finally, they screen cellular responses to these complex matrices using combinatorial methods in order to develop a global understanding of the ways in which these matrices can guide cellular responses. These studies are an important first step toward developing a synthetic hydrogel with which growth factors will have similar interactions as they do with demineralized bone matrix. This novel biomimetic approach could lead to the development of synthetic matrices that have similar function as therapeutically effective matrices, such as demineralized bone matrix, without the risks associated with these biological materials.

  
  

  Professor Washburn is also involved in developing DNA aptamers that target pro-inflammatory cytokines in a collaboration that involves Prof. Bruce Armitage, who also received a 3M Nontenured Faculty Award in 2001.
  
   
• On Monday, May 15th at 10:00 AM, MSE will host a tribute in honor of Professor Hubert I. Aaronson who passed away last December.  Several of Hub's former students and colleagues will share short remembrances of their association with Hub the "Professor" and Hub the "Man". The event is being held in the Singleton Room of George A. Roberts Engineering Hall on Carnegie Mellon's campus and will be followed by a light lunch.  To confirm your attendance or for additional information, please contact Suzanne Smith at (412) 268-5936 or sb3n@andrew.cmu.edu.
   
• The Paxton Award for the Best Doctoral Dissertation in Materials Science and Engineering: This award, made possible by the generosity of Ann and Harry Paxton, is intended to promote excellence in doctoral scholarship by recognizing the best Ph.D. dissertation of the year.
   
  To be eligible, the dissertation must have been submitted in final form in the period between May 1st 2005 and April 30th 2006.  Members of the MSE faculty must submit nominations to the MSE Department Head by May 1st 2006. The complete nomination consists of a brief statement explaining the superior qualities of the dissertation (approximately one page), a one sentence summary citation, and a copy of the dissertation in final form.
   
  The winner must attend the annual MSE graduation ceremony, where the Paxton Award will be presented.  The winner will receive $1500.

February 2006

• CMU Students Recognized at the February 16th ASM International's Young Members Night (Pittsburgh Golden Triangle Chapter), MSE students took home many awards.  Junior, Scott Roberts and sophomore, Nicolas Jones were awarded the "Past Chairperson's Education Assistance Awards" and senior, Yuranan Hanlumyuang was presented the "Outstanding College Senior Award".  In the graduate student poster competition, doctoral student Samuel Lim was awarded 1st place and doctoral student, Chris Roberts was awarded 2nd place.  In the undergraduate student poster competition, the team of juniors, Scott Roberts, Tim Miller, Nicole Cates and Hannes Eggenschweiler won 1st place while the team of seniors, Selina Brownridge, Diana Chan, Harry Chien and Yuranan Hanlumyuang won 2nd place.  Another MSE student, senior  Esther Yu was awarded the 3rd place prize.
   
• Prashant Kumta is developing microscale fuel cells that use methanol instead of expensive and unstable hydrogen, which is difficult to produce in large quantities. Click here to learn more.
   
• Rollett Paper Highly Cited: "Current issues in recrystallization", R. D. Doherty, D. A. Hughes, F. J. Humphreys, J. J. Jonas, D. J. Jensen, M. E. Kassner, W. E. King, T. R. McNelley, H. J. McQueen and A. D. Rollett, Mat. Sci. & Eng. A., 238/2, 219-274 (1997).
  
  For the year of 1997, it was the most cited paper of ALL articles published that year in Materials Science and Eng A, B, Philosophical Mag A, B, Scripta Mater, Jour. Mater Sci, Prog. Mater Sci, Metall. Mater. Trans, and many others. Click here to read the article.

October 2005

• A paper from Marek Skowronski's group was selected by Thomson ISI Essential Science Indicators as a representative of a "fast moving front" in Materials Science.  ISI identifies these papers by a surge in recent citations.  Marek's paper has recently been cited 52 times in subsequent publications.  Click here to read an interview with Marek. The paper is "Structure of recombination-induced stacking faults in high-voltage SiC p-n junctions, "Liu, JQ, Skowronski, M, Hallin, C, Soderholm, R, and Lendenmann, H, APPL PHYS LETT, 80 (5): 749-751, FEB 4 2002.
   
• Materials Science Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) will receive $6.5 million over the next six years from the National Science Foundation to continue creating new, super efficient materials for many industry sectors.
  
  "Our goal is to create new paradigms for interdisciplinary work that apply the principles of basic science and engineering to understanding the behavior, development and application of various materials," said Gregory S. Rohrer, head of MRSEC and Carnegie Mellon's Materials Science & Engineering Department. Since 1996, MRSEC researchers have been working to understand the intricate nature of nanoscale grain boundaries in materials. Most metallic and ceramic materials used in aircraft, automobiles and computers are made up of many microscopic crystals held together by grain boundaries. These materials are called polycrystals.
  
  "We are studying how these nanoscale polycrystals work and what makes them both durable and functional," Rohrer said.
  
  To that end, MRSEC researchers have discovered that materials in this polycrystalline state often behave differently depending on the types of grain boundaries they contain. Familiar materials, from gold to plastics, display startling new properties when the nanoscale grain boundary structure is altered. Some can display greatly increased strength or resistance to corrosion while others can turn into potent chemical catalysts. What's more, Carnegie Mellon researchers are finding with their newly developed computer-controlled experimental methodology that they can create materials for everything from fortified car fenders to more fuel-efficient aircraft.
  
  
  "We see our research ultimately making it possible for manufacturers to one day produce smaller, faster computer chips and safer power plants," Rohrer said.
  
  
  MRSEC also has extensive collaboration with national laboratories, as well as important international collaborations. An important feature of the educational program is a Partnership for Research and Education in Materials (PREM) with Florida A&M University. Carnegie Mellon's center is one of 29 centers nationwide supported by the MRSEC program with annual NSF support of $52.5 million.
   
  
• A paper by Professor Robert F. Davis with R. I. Barabash, G. E. Ice, W. Liu, S. Einfeldt, D. Hommel, A. M. Roskowski and R. F. Davis, "White X-ray Microbeam Analysis of Strain and Crystallographic Tilt in GaN Layers Grown by Maskless Pendeoepitaxy", Physica Status Solidi (a) 202, 732-738 (2005) was selected by the management of the Advance Photon Source as an "outstanding" result from that facility. This award acknowledges excellence in collaborative research between Davis' student team of scholars (Einfeldt and Roskowski) and those at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Barabash, Ice and Liu) and the University of Bremen (Einfeldtand Hommel).
   
• A paper by Professor Marc De Graef was selected by the editors of the Journal of Physics D for "institute of physics select status" as one of the best papers this month.  The paper is, "Demagnetization factors for elliptic cylinders, M. Beleggia, M. De Graef, Y.T. Millev, D.A. Goode, and G. Rowlands, J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 38 (2005) 3333-334"
   
• Professor Mohammad Islam's paper was featured on the cover of Science Magazine (Science, Vol 309, Issue 5738, 1207-1210, 19 August 2005). The paper, "Premelting at Defects Within Bulk Colloidal Crystals," by Alsayed, Islam, Zhang, Collings, and Yodh, accounts some of the work he did at Penn. [abstract]

August 2005

• Jessamine Winer (MSE '05) has won the Microscopy Society of America's Presidential Student Fellowship and travel grant to attend the 2005 MSA Conference in Honolulu, HI.  Jessamine is author of "Lorentz TEM Characterization of Al-Cu-Ge-Mn Alloys."  J. P. Winer, N. T. Nuhfer, M. E. McHenry and M. De Graef.

June 2005

• Professor Anthony D. Rollett and his co-workers (David Saylor, Joseph Friday, Bassem El-Dasher, Kee Young Jung) have won the Henry Marion Howe Medal from ASM. This medal has been awarded since 1923 to authors of the best paper in Metallurgical and Materials Transactions during the past year. Rollett's team has won the 2004 medal for the paper: D.M. Saylor, J. Fridy B.S. El-Dasher, K.-Y. Jung and A.D. Rollett, "Statistically Representative Three-Dimensional Microstructures Based on Orthogonal Observation Sections," Metallurgical and Materials Transactions, 35A (2004) 1969-1979. [PDF]

May 2005

• Professor Gregory S. Rohrer has been named Head of the Materials Science and Engineering Department effective May 16, 2005. Professor Rohrer received his Ph.D. from from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 and joined Carnegie Mellon in 1990.  Since 1999 he has served as the Director of the NSF funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at CMU.  Greg will replace current MSE Department Head Professor Alan W. Cramb who has accepted the position of Dean, School of Engineering at Rensselaer.

April 2005

• The MSE Spring 2005 Newsletter is available

February 2005

• The annual Young Member's Night of the Pittsburgh Golden Triangle Chapter of ASM International was held last night and it proved to be a winning night for many Materials Science and Engineering students. Senior, Jennifer Singelyn received the "Outstanding Senior Award", doctoral student Christopher Roberts was named "Chapter Outstanding Young Member" and junior Diana Chan and sophomore Nicole Cates were each presented the "Past Chairpersons' Education Assistance award. MSE students fared equally well in the poster competition with doctoral student Ying Pang taking home the first place prize (graduate competition) for her poster "Correlation between GB Segregation and Character in Nb-doped TiO^₂". Junior Eric Vanderson received first place (undergraduate competition) for his poster "Deformation Behavior of Rolled Cu-Nb Micro and Nano Composites" and juniors Selina Brownridge and Diana Chan shared the second place prize for their "Comparative Analysis of Processing Techniques on Y-Ba-Cu-O Superconductor". Senior Jennifer Singelyn was awarded the third place prize for "Gels for Tissue Engineering."

• Dr. Robert A. Heard has been appointed as the first Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.  The appointment is for a term of three years, effective July 1, 2005.

January 2005

• Professor Sridhar Seetharaman has been appointed editor of AIST Transactions, a technical journal that publishes articles on research in the manufacture of iron and steel.
   
• US News and World Report has just published their "America's Best Colleges 2005" report and MSE has been ranked #9 in the materials undergraduate engineering category.

September 2004

• The Fall 2004 MSE Newsletter is available

• The department was ranked as the ninth best undergraduate education program in the USA by US News and World Report.

• Professor Paul Salvador and Professor Sridhar Seetharaman were promoted to Associate Professor, effective July 1, 2004.
• Professor Prashant Kumta was interviewed on local television. The subject was the future of fuel cells.
• Professor Cramb gave a plenary lecture at the "Metals Seperation Technologies III" conference in Colorado.

• Professor Sridhar Seetharaman wins the Philbrook Award of the department. The Philbrook award recognizes excellence in education and research.
• Professor Garrison will be awarded a twenty year service award at graduation
• Mitra Taheri, a graduate student in Professor Rollett's group wins a Silver Award at the recent MRS meeting
• Professor Cramb became the chair of the "University Materials Council" and also became President Elect of the AIME.

• Professor Richard J. Fruehan, U.S. Steel University Professor of Materials Science and Engineering will be awarded the Bessemer Gold Medal for 2004 from The Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining. The award which is given for outstanding services to the steel industry, including contributions to the development of the steel industry and its importance to the economy nationally and internationally, will be given in London on June 15, 2004.
• Professor Elias Towe was named as the first recipient of the A & E Grobstein Memorial Professorship in the Departent of Materials Science and Engineering. This chair was established through the estate of Ethel and Albert Grobstein.
• A special dinner was held at the TMS meeting in Charlotte to celebrate Prof. Aaronson's Hume Rothery award.
• Professors Cramb and Paxton joined the CMU-Japan alumni event in Tokyo.

• Professor Robert Davis joins the faculty of MSE as the John R. Bertucci Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. Professor Davis is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and well known for his work in semiconductors.
• Profs. Prashant Kumta and Charles Sfeir gain first NIH grant in MSE history. This collaboration between the University of Pittsburgh and CMU marks another milestone in the successful Biomaterials effort in MSE that is lead by Prof. Kumta.

• Prof. Sridhar Seetharaman was awarded an NSF CAREER Award
• Professor Greg Rohrer was chosen to receive the Richard M. Fulrath Award from the American Ceramic Society in 2004. This award recogizes outstanding academic and industrial ceramic engineers/scientists who are 45 years of age or younger at the time of the presentation of the award at the ACerS Annual Meeting Banquet.
• Profesor Richard Fruehan was chosen to recieve CIT's Distinguished Professor of Engineering Award. This is the highest award that a Professor can receive from the Engineering College and was based upon Prof. Fruehan's leadership in the area of chemical metallurgy and process development related to the steel industry.
• Professors David Laughlin and David Lambeth were chosen to receive the Outstanding Research Award of the College of Engineering. This award is based upon the pioneering and successful interdisciplinary development of key magnetic thin film technology ( the B2 structured underlayers of NiAl and RuAl) that have been implemented worldwide and have lead to improved performance and a continued increase in storage density in hard disk drives.
• Professor Prashant Kumta's research on Methanol Fuel Cells written up in Pittsburgh Post Gazette (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03335/245885.stm)
• Professor Elias Towe was elected to Fellow of the American Physical Society. APS fellowship is limited to no more than 0.5% of the membership. Elias's citation is "For pioneering contributions to the application of quantum dot nanostructures in optoelectronic devices and for innovative use of phenomena in the design of novel optical devices"

• Professor Hubert Aaronson to receive the 2004 Hume Rothery Award from TMS at the TMS Annual meeting in March 2004. This award is presented annually to an outstanding scientific leader for exceptional scholarly contributions to the science of alloys.

• Professor Anthony Rollett begins a sabbatical leave in Germany

• Yan Wang, Martin Valdez and Prof. Sridhar Seetharaman win the 2003 Marcus A. Grossman Young Author Award of ASM.

• Prof. M. McHenry wins the Philbrook Award

Prof. Richard Fruehan has a prize named after him by the Iron and Steel Society. The Richard J. Fruehan Award will be given to the authors of the best paper in a Process Technology Division conference in a given year.
Prof. Marc De Graef''s new book entitled "Introduction to Conventional Electron Microscopy" was released by Cambridge University Press

• Prof. Kumta was named editor of Materials Science and Engineering B
• Prof. Rohrer was named as the first recipient of the W. W. Mullins Professorship in Materials Science and Engineering

Profs. Rohrer and Mullins were awarded the Ross Coffin Purdy Award of the American Ceramic Society for "the most valuable contribution to ceramic technical literature" during 2000.
Prof. Cramb was named the John Elliott lecturer by ISS/TMS for 2002

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