GRADUATE STUDENTS

MSE Graduate Student and Army Soldier Facilitates Mass Vaccination Site

Healthcare workers and military personnel at Middletown mass vaccination site

As much of Connecticut becomes vaccinated against the coronavirus, many of the mass vaccination sites are handled by not just healthcare workers but also military personnel. Materials Science and Engineering graduate student Michael Fazzino is one of the soldiers who ensures the safety and efficacy of the Middletown mass vaccination site.

After earning his bachelor’s degree in the spring of 2019 from UConn MSE, Fazzino took a semester off to undergo military training before he would continue as both a member of the armed services and a UConn MSE graduate student this past winter. Though this was a progression in both his academic and military careers, managing the two roles was nothing new to Fazzino. He had been managing higher education and a role in the army since he began both in the fall of 2015. He started the latter as a member of the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps or ROTC. This decision may seem overwhelming to some, but Fazzino was driven by an important influence. “My uncle was the main reason I joined the Army, as he is a veteran and a large influence on my life,” he says. Quickly, Fazzino was thrown into both graduate research and his work for the military. “I got orders the first week of February to assist with the vaccinations in Connecticut, and our Middletown Wesleyan mass vaccination site opened about a week after that,” he says. Fazzino then assumed his role as ‘Officer in Charge’ or OIC by day, and graduate researcher by night. “On an average day I will spend most of my time at the vaccination site, and I do what I can when I get home,” he says. He is responsible for managing all of the soldiers at the site. “I act as a bridge between the soldiers and civilians, and as a point of contact at the site for other military personnel,” he says. As an MSE graduate student, Fazzino has been focused on an Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) project with Professor Serge Nakhmanson’s research group collaborating with the Additive Manufacturing and Materials Data for Manufacturing team. Fazzino’s main research project involves simulating various aspects of additive manufacturing processes with Discrete Element Method (DEM) software. This is in partnership with Professor Rainer Hebert’s research group. Simultaneously, he is involved in activities for the Metal Casting Group under the guidance of Professor Harold Brody. “I am very impressed by Mike’s dedication to his duties both as a grad student and an Army officer, as well as his eagerness to learn as much as possible from MSE faculty and peers,” Nakhmanson says. According to Nakhmanson, though he appreciates Michael’s service, he hopes he will return as a full time student once his duties are complete.

TACKLING THE FUTURE OF ENERGY INNOVATION

Third-year MSE doctoral student, Amir Soleymani, working alongside members of Professor Jasna Jankovic’s Research Group, is conducting research at the forefront of energy innovation.

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INSPIRED BY INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH TO PURSUE ENTREPRENEURSHIP

When Moe Daeipour was in high school, he witnessed something life-changing— scan for full story a liquid-nitrogen frozen marshmallow. While this may sound insignificant to some, it was the catalyst for Daeipour’s career in materials science and engineering.

Ummay Habiba Contributes to Innovation in the Aircraft Industry

Habiba always had a fascination about experimental and laboratory-based research work. Her attraction to research started during her graduate studies in her home country, Bangladesh, which focused on ferromagnetic materials for cancer treatments and for ecofriendly refrigeration systems. While conducting this research, she realized that the impacts of materials scientists in our society are not confined just to engineering, but actually in every sector of life either directly or indirectly. This influenced Habiba to pursue a career in materials science and engineering.

Habiba earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in applied physics, electronics and communication engineering at the University of Chittagong, Bangladesh. As her research drew her interests towards materials science and engineering, she decided to continue her education at the UConn MSE department. She had been attracted by the department’s large pool of talented faculties and the state-of-the-art research opportunities. Although Habiba entered the PhD program with a nonmaterials science background, she felt that the core courses were structured appropriately for students like herself. “The comprehensive nature of these core MSE courses helped me well in settle into MSE based research,” she says.

Habiba’s current work explores the application of additive manufacturing in the aircraft industry. Working under the supervision of Professor Rainer Hebert, she focuses especially on the surface and thermal properties of powder using the ESI Additive Manufacturing system. This is a prototyping software which simulates a product’s behavior during testing, manufacturing and reallife use. Powder spreading in particular is a crucial part of the additive manufacturing process and, if implemented well, can diminish the weight and cost of various aerospace components and hence can strongly impact the industry.

“I have an 8-month-old boy. There is a myth for women that they have to choose between a PhD degree and a family. Many people think that if they want a family, they do not have what it takes to be a successful researcher. This simply is not the case. There are many women and men who are both devoted parents and partners, and also highly successful researchers,” Habiba says.

Habiba’s career goal is to do something significant and revolutionary for the aircraft industry through her current research. In addition to the inspiration which comes from her research topic, and the broader support from UConn’s MSE department, she appreciates the expert guidance from her advisor Professor Herbert. “I am very fortunate to get the opportunity to work with a very supportive and professional supervisor who has provided us a very positive work environment with strong connections to industry,” she says. “I absolutely love what I do, and I am lucky to be able to work on what I love.”

Thomas Moran Reflects on Industry Internship Across the World

During his graduate research, Materials Science and Engineering PhD student Thomas Moran stepped out of his comfort zone and into the eastern hemisphere when he decided to pursue professional industry experience in Japan. With the help of his advisor, Department Head Bryan Huey, Moran was able to join the Japanese electronics manufacturer Murata as a Research and Development Intern.

The work with Murata in Japan was related to their joint project at UConn. “I worked primarily with my colleague Hiroyuki Kondo, using a high vacuum AFM system to study charge injection and dissipation phenomena and compare it to behavior observed at UConn in ambient or inert atmospheres,” Moran says.

According to Moran, he also gained experience with new areas of research learning about the synthesis of the materials, including producing samples himself. “I found this really valuable, as most of the work we do in the Huey group involves studying incredible materials and devices from elsewhere in the world, rather than us producing the materials,” he says. Aside from the different nature of his research, Moran also was exposed to a new work environment. “It was interesting to see the differences between professional life in the USA and in Japan,” he says. According to him, everyone who works there wears a uniform and there is a much more structured work schedule. Despite being out of his comfort zone in this new environment, Moran says he quickly adapted thanks to his hosts and coworkers.

(Left to right) Hiroyuki Kondo, Keigo Suzuki, and Thomas Moran. Kondo worked with Moran on the vacuum AFM system while Suzuki was Moran’s host.

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Sara Pedram Researches Alternative Energy Sources

Graduate student Sara Pedram moved from Iran to the U.S. looking for work in chemical engineering. Instead, she found UConn MSE and an interest in sustainable energy.

UConn’s Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) graduate student Sara Pedram is from Iran, a country known for its energy exportation — specifically, oil. Ironically, the dependency much of the world has on her home country’s industry is one of the forces that drove Pedram to focus her graduate research on renewable energy. Before Pedram ever started this research, the Iranian oil industry had influenced the direction of her undergraduate studies. “I have always enjoyed and excelled in math and science, and because Iran has a big oil and gas industry, I thought becoming a chemical engineer would be the most sensible career path for me,” she says. Prior to moving to the United States, she had pursued her bachelor’s and first master’s degrees in chemical engineering from Shiraz University and Amirkabir University of Technology, respectively, in Iran. She then worked as a researcher at the Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Research Center of Iran (CCERCI) and at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in France.

It was during this time in France that Pedram thought she might like to travel again. “I became highly interested in continuing to do work in another country,” she says. “The U.S. is a very diverse country with many opportunities for everyone, so I decided to build a career here.”

While the idea of pursuing highly technical studies in three entirely different countries might scare some, it excited Pedram. In 2017, she packed her bags and moved to the United States to begin looking for jobs related to chemical engineering. However, according to her, it was very difficult to find a job having no previous work experience or degree from the U.S. “This led me to pursue a master’s degree instead. I already had my master’s in chemical engineering, so I wanted to study something related to my background but not the same thing,” she says. Materials science and engineering was something that Pedram says she had become familiar with and interested in during her past research in Iran and France. “It is a highly interdisciplinary field that deals with a number of research areas, and I found it an appropriate area for my long-term career goals. Through my research, I discovered UConn’s MSE program, which is highly-ranked and well-regarded,” she says. Ultimately, she decided that UConn’s MSE program would be the best choice. “The main things that attracted me to UConn were the Innovation Partnership Building, which is

filled with the latest and newest technology, the department’s deeply collaborative nature with industry partners and professors internally, and the outstanding faculty,” she says. Aside from her hard work, it was through these opportunities and relationships that Pedram says she has become successful since beginning at UConn in 2018. “I have had many opportunities to collaborate with industry partners, which have led to summer internships and good relationships with industry professionals,” she says. One of these professionals is her advisor and mentor, Assistant Professor Jasna Jankovic.

“Professor Jankovic is an extremely supportive and inspiring person, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to join her lab group. I knew that I would not only be working on innovative research but also that Professor Jankovic would emotionally support me,” Pedram says. The Jasna Jankovic Research Group focuses on advanced imaging spectroscopy techniques, nanomaterials for clean energy applications, fuel cells, batteries, and structure-property- performance correlation. “Sara is a very mature, smart and responsible student. She is resourceful and always finds solutions for research challenges. I can rely on her to do everything properly and on time. It is such a pleasure having Sara in my research team.” Professor Jankovic says. Pedram’s research focuses on using renewable energy for transportation applications, specifically proton exchange membrane fuel cells. Fuel cells electrochemically combine hydrogen and oxygen to create electricity, with water as the only by-product. In our modern-day society where almost everything depends on energy and fossil fuels are exhaustible, Pedram’s work is extremely important. “We must reconsider or innovate our energy sources in order to continue to sustain our civilization for future generations,” she says. Pedram’s favorite and most recent paper (out of a dozen she has published), “Review on Bio-Inspired PEM Fuel Cells,” was recently published in the Advanced Energy & Sustainability Research Journal and it deals with more on this topic. In the paper, Pedram confronts the climate crisis and addresses the promise and obstacles associated with using PEM fuel cell technology. “It shows how we can design inspiration from nature and implement it into modern-day applications,” she says. And though fossil fuels can run out, Pedram’s interest in her work doesn’t seem like it will. “Knowing the relationship between the microstructure and properties of materials can allow us to create more useful products with higher efficiency. Using materials characterization techniques to image and visualize from the surface of the material to its atoms is still something that fascinates and inspires me each time,” Pedram says.

During the summer of 2019, Pedram participated in an internship with Giner Inc., a Boston-based electrochemical research and development firm. Professor Jankovic’s group had been collaborating with the company. “It gave me an opportunity to experience an industry environment and see how my research can affect real-life applications, which was really rewarding,” Pedram says. Pedram is heavily involved with the Center for Clean Energy Engineering, where she conducts her research and where she participated in events to teach high school students the importance of engineering and its role in producing clean energy. It seems only natural that teaching comes easily to Pedram, as an individual whose unique identity can inspire in so many ways. She has assumed the role of foreigner, immigrant, student, female engineer, environmentalist, and more. The diverse experiences she has embraced have set her up to be successful in many ways. “Having these experiences in different countries has allowed me the ability to look at problems from many different perspectives. I can solve engineering problems in creative ways because of my exposure to so many research environments. These experiences have also significantly improved my communication and interpersonal skills. When there is a language barrier or culture barrier, you must find other ways to communicate what you want to say effectively,” she says. Her worldly experiences translate to her research which ultimately works to solve a universal problem: sustainable energy. Though Pedram says she decided to pursue her master's degree in hopes of increasing her job opportunities, her goals have shifted. “I initially wanted to get a job immediately after my master's degree, but my experience at MSE and with Dr. Jankovic’s research group has been extremely rewarding and inspired me to continue into a PhD program,” she says. Sara is currently pursuing her PhD studies to develop a novel design for efficient fuel cells, something that she and Dr. Jankovic are hoping to commercialize in the future.

MSE graduate student Sara Pedram