UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS

JOHN ERIC MORRAL

John Eric Morral, prior MSE department head as we made the important step to add an undergraduate degree in 2003, passed away earlier this past year. He became a fellow of ASM International in 1995, was awarded the Gibbs Phase Equilibria Award in 2017, and for many years edited the Journal of Phase Diagrams and Diffusion. Professor Pamir Alpay, Associate Dean, notes “John was an excellent researcher and a great mentor. We will all miss him.”

HARRIS MARCUS

Former IMS Director, Harris Marcus, passed away in January this year. During his tenure as Director of IMS, Marcus dramatically increased the infrastructure for research within IMS through the acquisition of major instrumentation for both soft and hard materials, and by rigorously recruiting excellent faculty members and graduate students to the University. His career was marked by numerous awards for excellence including the Von Karman Memorial Special Award for Outstanding Contributions to Aerospace and Structural Materials Technology in Past Decade, the Purdue University Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award, Northwestern University Alumni Association Award of Merit, and induction in the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering.

MSE Seniors Redesign Alloy Casting of Senior Souvenir

During their final semester at UConn, Megan Hurley and Marin Bolko decided to do something different for the final project they would do as undergraduates. Due to COVID-19, their final year was anything but normal and nothing UConn had experienced before, so the mission to redesign the traditional senior souvenir was a fitting project.

The classic souvenir is a brick casting which reads ‘UCONN.’ Hurley and Bolko decided that they wanted to transform this version into a sand casted brick which would instead read ‘UCONN MSE ‘21.’ This brick would be handed out to all MSE graduating seniors.

Hurley and Bolko had taken Professor Harold Brody’s Alloy Casting course the year prior which was when the project commenced. At the time, Brody had suggested a project to Hurley and Bolko which would involve comparing sand casting to investment casting of the souvenirs based on quality of the cast and efficiency of production.

The project, like the bricks before sanding, was not a smooth process. Difficulties began not long after the project’s idea came to light, when the coronavirus pandemic interrupted the process. According to Bolko, the bricks were supposed to be for the MSE graduating class of 2020. Unable to continue the necessary in-person work, Hurley and Bolko put the project on hold.

However, instead of letting the project completely end, Hurley and Bolko picked up their work for the 2021 seniors, the class that they would also be graduating alongside.

Aside from the pandemic, Bolko and Hurley admit they confronted other obstacles throughout the project’s process. The design went through three iterations before the final design was successfully tested and put into production.

Despite any difficulties, the project became a success and the moments of frustration left Bolko and Hurley with more experience. “Things won’t go the way you planned, expect something to go wrong the first time you do something new,” the two wrote in their project summary.

They finished making plaques just in time for the School of Engineering commencement ceremony. The souvenir plaques could not be distributed in the typical way to MSE graduates in Rentschler Field because of pandemic health precautions. Instead, graduates drove to a nearby parking lot near the field before the ceremony where Hurley, Professor Brody, and MSE Department Head Professor Bryan Huey waited to distribute plaques and to congratulate the 2021 MSE graduates.

Ultimately, the impact of the project will last beyond the brick itself. “Marin and Megan set what I expect to be a tradition for MSE majors to design, fabricate, and distribute UConn-MSE plaques to the graduating class. We can expect each graduating class will improve on the prior year’s design; and like Megan and Marin they will learn that making things is fun and that manufacturing is both art and science,” Brody says.

UConn MSE souvenir plaques

Congratulations to the Class of 2021!

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE GRADUATES

Imani A. Addo Samuel M. Bedard Marin C. Bolko Kathryn Breen Evan A. Byers Louis P. Crisci Alex F. Distelman Benjamin D. Ellery Brenda M. Gomes Megan E. Hurley Megan R. Jankovsky Gregory M. Joyce Joseph K. Kavgaci Noah D. Kinard Joe P. Loduca Zuyang Ma Karl Douglass J. Mueller Nicolette O. Naya Brittany Nelson Julia M. Opramolla Chandni Patel Indranie Rambarran Joshua Relucio David T. Rodziewicz Julia B. Roemer Jeet C. Rosa Cameron N. Sanders Samuel M. Schaefer Nicholas A. Simpson Sean Small Kienan H. Tierney Joseph Tracey Zubin Wadia James H. Ward Nicholas J. Wells Marian C. Whitney Yizhi Xu Justin Zendzion

GRADUATES WITH MSE MINOR

Cong Hu Joyce N. Caliendo Ounssa Akhayar Heather Brown Stefani M. Chiarelli Katrina Cirilli Evan C. D'Agostino Teagan J. Driscoll Mateo Escobar Gavin P. Fennell Kyle J. Filleti Dawson M. Hettrick Jonell Hobert Thomas R. Philipson Kristin N. Rheault Caroline L Thompson Evan K. Cyganowski Colin M. Fitzsimonds Rachel E. Martineau Kevin Yang

MASTER OF SCIENCE GRADUATES

Mohamad R. Daeipour Jessica M. Maita Maita Bo Zhang

MASTER OF ENGINEERING GRADUATES

Michael Bennett Patrick Besana Stephen Buffardi Alexandru Cadar Amy Hernandez Kenan Jasavic Zachary Konopaske James Kos Brendan McLarty Laura Murphy Neel Nadpara Jonathan Rasimas

PHD GRADUATES

SUMIT ATHIKAVIL SURESH

Major Advisor: Avinash Dongare Doctoral Dissertation: Mesoscale Modeling of Cold Spray Deposition of Metal Powders

AYANA GHOSH

Major Advisor: Serge Nakhmanson Doctoral Dissertation: Predicting Materials Behavior with Atomistic Simulations and Machine Learning

BAHAREH DELJOO

(omitted from 2019-20 Outreach Bulletin) Major Advisor: Mark Aindow Doctoral Dissertation: Effect of Process Conditions on Phase Stability and Morphology in Manganese Oxide Nano-materials

DOUGLAS HENDRIX

Major Advisor: Kay Wille and Bryan Huey Doctoral Dissertation: The Characterization and Optimization of Colloidal Nanosilica Dispersion in Ultra-High Performance Concrete

JUNSUNG HONG

Major Advisor: Prabhakar Singh Doctoral Dissertation: Mitigation of Air-electrode Degradation in High-Temperature Electrochemical Systems: Capture of Airborne Contaminants by Getters

THOMAS J. MORAN

Major Advisor: Bryan Huey Doctoral Dissertation: Nanoscale Thickness-Dependent Charge Dynamics and Domains Structure Properties in Dielectric and Ferroelectric Materials

KENNETH S. OGUERI

Major Advisor: Cato Laurencin Doctoral Dissertation: Design and Development of Novel Biocompatible and Mechanically Competent Polyphosphazenebased Blends for Bone Tissue Regeneration

GYUHO SONG

Major Advisor: Seok-Woo Lee Doctoral Dissertation: In-situ Investigation on Mechanical Behavior of Superelastic Intermetallic Compound CaKFe4As4 at the Micrometer Scale

DENNIS TRUJILLO

Major Advisor: Pamir Alpay Doctoral Dissertation: Materials Discovery via Data Mining, Machine Learning, and Atomistic Modelling

BO ZHANG

Major Advisor: Pu-Xian Gao Doctoral Dissertation: Zinc Oxide based Nanowire Arrays for Selective Detection of Multiple Gaseous Analytes at Elevated Temperature