Highlights

During the 2019/2020 academic year, CREDDS sent five PhD students for extended internships at NNSA laboratories: Paul Christodoulou worked with Ricardo Lebensohn at LANL/MST-8, Emmeline Sheu worked with Kevin Baldwin at LANL/CINT, Edwin Chiu worked with John Mitchell at SNL/CCR, Ethan Sprague worked with Ibo Matthews at LLNL/NIF. Marco Echeverria worked with Alison Saunders at LLNL.

In the wake of the COVID-19 epidemic, CREDDS organized a 13-week online summer school on dynamic deformation of solids. The school has 166 registrants from 38 institutions. Lecturers include professors from several US universities and technical staff members from three NNSA laboratories.

Rowan Baird, an undergraduate summer researcher supported at TAMU by CREDDS and the USRG program, won first place in her group at the TAMU 2019 REU/USRG poster competition. Her poster was selected from among 36 competitors. Congratulations!

Rowan Baird with her 1st place certificate.

Texas A&M Associate Dean for Graduate Programs, Dr. Harry Hogan (right), presents Rowan Baird with her 1st place certificate.

CREDDS collaborates with another NNSA center at Texas A&M University, the Center for Excellence in Nuclear Training and University-Based Research (CENTAUR), to engage undergraduate summer interns.

CREDDS director, Michael Demkowicz, presents to undergraduate researchers working within CREDDS, CENTAUR, and other programs at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University.

CENTAUR director, Sherry Yennello, presents to CREDDS and CENTAUR undergraduate researchers.

CREDDS co-sponsors, together with the undergraduate summer research grant (USRG) program at Texas A&M University, eight undergraduate summer students during the summer of 2019: Sasha George (Texas A&M University), Anthony Chavez (Rio Hondo College), Elizabeth Schiesser (U. of Connecticut), Rowan Baird (U. of Mississippi), Hunter Harris (Texas A&M University), Andres Ramirez (U. of Arkansas), Carrie Jones (Texas A&M University), Peter Evans (Texas A&M University).

Left to right: Peter Evans, Carrie Jones, Rowan Baird, Andres Ramirez, Elizabeth Schiesser, Sasha George, Hunter Harris, Anthony Chavez.

Five CREDDS PhD students went on extended internships at NNSA labs in the past year: Paul Christodoulou worked with Ricardo Lebensohn at LANL/MST-8, Ben Derby worked with Kevin Baldwin at LANL/CINT, Liya Semenchenko worked with Dan Coughlin at LANL/SIGMA, Avery Samuel worked with Saryu Fensin at LANL/MST-8, and Marco Echeverria worked with Tomorr Haxhimali and Robert Rudd at LLNL.

CREDDS had its first on-site review on May 22-23, 2019. We thank our reviewers for their commitment to fostering excellence in the NNSA’s SSAA projects: Tod Caldwell (NNSA), Allen Dalton (NNSA), Michael Kreisler (NNSA), Darby Luscher (LANL), Nathan Barton (LLNL), Cristopher Seagle (SNL), and David Dombrowski (LANL).

Bottom row, left to right: Michael Kreisler, Tod Caldwell, Allen Dalton, Chris Seagle, Nathan Barton. Second row from bottom, left to right: Michael Demkowicz, Dave Dombrowski. Third row from bottom, left to right: Isabel Cantu, Rajesh Kumar, Ben Derby, Max Powers. Fourth row from bottom, left to right: Marco Echeverria, Toby Francis, George Pharr, Ethan Sprague, Daniel Yin. Fifth row from bottom, left to right: Zach Levin, Ta Duong, Avery Samuel, Avinash Dongare. Sixth row from bottom, left to right: Darby Luscher, Liya Semenchenko, Irene Beyerlein, Paul Christodoulou, Amit Misra.

CREDDS held its first center scientific advisory committee (CSAC) meeting on April 9, 2019. We are grateful to our CSAC members, who provided us invaluable feedback and advice: Ellen Cerreta (Los Alamos National Lab), Mukul Kumar (Lawrence Livermore National Lab), Brad Boyce (Sandia National Lab), Don Brenner (North Carolina State U.), and Marisol Koslowski (Purdue U.).

Bottom row, left to right: Brad Boyce, Marisol Koslowski, Ellen Cerreta, Don Brenner, Mukul Kumar. Second row from bottom, left to right: Michael Demkowicz, Ta Duong, Isabel Cantu. Third row from bottom: Edwin Chiu. Fourth row from bottom, left to right: Liya Semenchenko, Emmeline Sheu, Marco Echeverria, Avery Samuel, Max Powers, Ethan Sprague. Fifth row from bottom, left to right: Wes Higgins, George Pharr, Frank Zok, Avinash Dongare. Sixth row from bottom, left to right: Chris Walker, Ted Hartwig. Top row, left to right: Zach Levin, Jyoti Mazumder, Amit Misra.

The NNSA’s Stewardship Science Academic Alliances (SSAA) program establishes the Center for Research Excellence on Dynamically Deformed Solids (CREDDS). Learn more about the mission of CREDDS in this press release from Texas A&M University.