Highlights

Congratulations to CREDDS team member, Irene Beyerlein (UCSB), on her election to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for “methodologies predicting the mechanics of complex engineering materials to improve their stability and strength.”

CREDDS students showcased their research at NNSA’s 2024 Stewardship Science Academic Programs Symposium.

(Left to right): Andrew Shortridge (UConn), Jasdeep Singh (TAMU), Phillip Tsurkan (UConn), and Charles Bornstein (TAMU).

The December 2023 issue of “Stewardship Science Today,” published by the NNSA’s Office of Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E), highlighted research by CREDDS faculty, Michael Demkowicz and Ankit Srivastava, and CREDDS PhD student, Ta Duong. The work, published in Nature, reports autonomous healing of nano-scale fatigue cracks during fatigue loading.

Wes Higgins (TAMU) was recognized for his presentation, titled “Investigating the Strain Rate Dependence of Hardness of Cu/Mo Nanolaminate Films Using Conventional and High Strain Rate Nanoindentation Methods.” Congratulations!

Victor Villanueva (U. of Virginia), an undergraduate summer researcher supported by CREDDS, won an outstanding presentation award from the 2022 online REU (O-REU) program at Texas A&M University for his presentation titled “Quantitative Metallographic Analysis using Machine Learning.”

CREDDS sponsored internships for eleven undergraduate students in the summer of 2022. Two of them carried out on-site research at Texas A&M University (TAMU) through the Undergraduate Summer Research Grant (USRG) program: Wendy Storms and Kyle Johnson (both from TAMU). Six participated in the online REU (O-REU) program at TAMU: Grant Blankenbeckler (NC State), Nathan LaVoie (U. of Idaho), John Mwungeli (TAMU), Tom Ralph (TAMU), Victor Villanueva (UVA), and Nathan Youmans (Oral Roberts U.). Three U. of Michigan undergraduates worked directly with CREDDS faculty at Michigan: Alexandra Dewy and Jeffrey Tschihart with A. Misra and Michael Stryk with J. Gordon.

CREDDS PhD student, Lauren Poole (UC Santa Barbara), won the early career presenter award at the 2022 Shock Compression of Condensed Matter conference organized by the American Physical Society (APS) in Anaheim, CA. Congratulations!

CREDDS held is 2022 center scientific advisory committee (CSAC) meeting in College Station, TX, on June 14, 2022. We are grateful to our CSAC members: Ellen Cerreta (Los Alamos National Laboratory), Mukul Kumar (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), Brad Boyce (Sandia National Laboratory), Don Brenner (North Carolina State University), and Pradeep Guduru (Brown University).

During the 2021/2022 academic year, six CREDDS PhD students had extended internships at NNSA laboratories. Emmeline Sheu (TAMU) spent the entire year in residence at LANL working with Kevin Baldwin. Three CREDDS students—Liya Semenchenko (TAMU), Marco Echeveria (U. of Connecticut), and Lauren Poole (UCSB)—worked under the guidance of Saryu Fensin in the dynamic deformation group at LANL. Paul Christodoulou (UCSB) worked with Ricardo Lebensohn at LANL. Finally, Ta Duong (TAMU) will spend the summer of 2022 in residence at SNL working with Remi Dingreville.