Congratulations to Beam Team PhD students Sean Mills and Nathan Johnson for winning awards at CSM GRADS 2019!

Mills won best poster presentation and Johnson won best oral presentation.

GRADS (Graduate Research and Discovery Symposium) is an event designed by graduate students for graduate and undergraduate students doing cutting-edge research at Mines. Participants practice their presentation skills and get real-time feedback from Mines faculty, Mines alums, and professionals acting as judges. This year’s GRADS was held April 17–18 on the Mines campus and included presentations from roughly 180 students.

Mills provided an overview of his poster presentation:
“My poster contained information on my NASA Glenn–funded thesis project, which is focused on elucidating the effects of Ni-Ti-Hf ternary alloys. We have combined several mechanical screening tests with high-resolution microscopy techniques to determine effective pre-processing parameters to produce bearing-grade Ni-Ti-Hf alloys for space-age applications. In a very promising Ni-Ti-Hf alloy sample, we compared experimental findings with DFT simulations to determine the specific structure information and resulting properties of a recently discovered variant of Ni3Ti2 phase.”

Johnson gave a synopsis of his presentation:
“My talk focused on experiments done with our collaborators at Los Alamos National Laboratory. We are looking at new methods of observing grain growth during the solidification process for stainless steel and titanium alloys. Using a method called high-energy X-ray diffraction, we measured the phase fractions, lattice parameters, and temperature of weld beads during solidification — all the way from a liquid melt to a fully solid part!”

Mills plans to complete his PhD in Materials Science in Fall 2019. Johnson plans to complete his PhD in Materials Science in Spring 2021.