Alumni

PhD Graduates

Brandon Mackey

Graduated: May 2024

Placement: Pratt & Whitney

PhD Thesis Title: High Temperature Process to Structure to Performance Material Modeling

John Ferguson

Graduated: December 2023

Placement: US Air Force

PhD Thesis Title: Residual Stress and Microstructural Evolution of Composites and Coatings for Extreme Environments

Glenn R. Peterson

Graduated: August 2023

Placement: US Air Force

PhD Thesis Title: Novel Ultra-High Temperature Material Processing, Characterization, and Modeling

Sven Gustafson

Graduated: May 2023

Placement: Cornell High Energy Synchroton Source

Thesis Title: Sub-Grain Deformation Mechanisms of Structural Materials Exposed through X-ray Microscopy

Saikiran Gopalakrishnan

Graduated: May 2022

Placement: Engineering USA - Changing Manufacuturing Consultants

Thesis Title: Integration of product lifecycle behavior into component design, manufacturing and performance analysis to realize a digital twin representation through a model-based feature information network

John Rotella

Graduated: December 2021

Placement: Air Force Research Laboratory

PhD Thesis Title: Preferential microstructural pathways of strain localization within nickel and titanium alloys

Greg Scofield

Graduated: December 2021

Placement: Rolls-Royce Corporation

PhD Thesis Title: Chemomechanical behavior of a melt-infiltrated SiC-Si composite at 900°C

Ronald Agyei

Graduated: August 2021

Placement: Post-doc at Johns Hopkins University

PhD Thesis Title: Investigating damage in short fiber reinforced composites

Imad Hanhan

Graduated: May 2020

Placement: Post-doc at Purdue University

PhD Thesis Title: Investigating damage in discontinuous fiber composites through coupled with in-situ X-ray tomography experiments and simulations

Veerappan Prithivijan

Graduated: May 2020

Placement: Post-doc at Los Alamos National Laboratory

PhD Thesis Title: Modeling fatigue behavior of additively manufactured Ni-based super alloys via crystal plasticity

Ritwik Bandyopadhyay

Graduated: May 2020

Placement: Post-doc at Purdue University

PhD Thesis Title: Ensuring fatigue performance via location-specific lifing in aerospace components made of titanium alloys andnickel-base superalloys

Kartik Kapoor

Graduated: December 2019

Placement: Intel Corporation

PhD Thesis Title: Experimentally Validated Crystal Plasticity Modeling of Titanium Alloys at Multiple Length-Scales based on Materials Characterization, Accounting for Residual Stresses

Andrea Nicolas

Graduated: August 2019

Placement: Post-doc Argonne National Laboratory (ANL)

PhD Thesis Title: Effects of the local micromechanics and electrochemistry on the galvanic corrosion of AA7050-T7451

Diwakar P. Naragani

Graduated: August 2019

Placement: Post-doc Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)

PhD Thesis Title: High Energy X-ray Study of Defect Mediated Damage in Bulk Polycrystalline Ni-based Superalloys

Dr. Andrea Rovinelli

Graduated: December 2017

Placement: Post-doc Argonne National Laboratory (ANL)

PhD Thesis Title: A General Probablistic Framework Combining Experiments and Simulations to Identify the Small Crack Driving Force

LTC Todd Book, PhD

Graduated: July 2016

Placement: Research Group Leader, West Point, US Military Academy

Thesis Title: Structural Integrity of Additive Materials: Microstructure, Fatigue Behavior, and Surface Processing

Saikumar Reddy

Graduated: December 2015

Placement: Post-doc NASA Langley (LaRC)

Thesis: A Microstructure-Based Fatigue Life Prediction Framework and its Validation

Masters Graduates

Joel Davis

Graduated: December 2025

Placement: Rolls-Royce Corporation

MS Thesis Title: Thermal Alleviation Effects on the Dwell Fatigue Life of Ti-6Al-4V

James Carr

Graduated: December 2025

Placement: Royal Australian Air Force Corporation

MS Thesis Title: The High Cycle Fatigue Response Of A Topology Optimized Laser Powder Bed Fusion Inconel 718 Feature-Based Component

Taylor Hodes

Graduated: December 2024

Placement: Blue Origin

MS Thesis Title: Understanding Loading Effects and Post-Processing Effects on the Durability of Additively Manufactured Ti-6Al-4V

Gaurav Gandhi

Graduated: December 2024

Placement: Royal Australian Air Force

MS Thesis Title: Fatigue Behavior of LPBF GRCop-42 Specimens with Cooling Channels

Chase Larsen

Graduated: December 2024

Placement: Rolls-Royce Corporation

Non-Thesis Research Topic: Development and Testing of Joined High Temperature Materials for Hypersonic Thermal Protection System

Nitilasksh Prasad

Graduated: December 2024

Placement: Royal Australian Air Force

MS Thesis Title: The Effect of High Temperature Treatment on the Ablative and Flexural Performance of 2D Carbon-Carbon

Patrick Morrison

Graduated: May 2024

MS Thesis Title: Fatigue Modeling of Cold Spray 6061 Aluminum as a Repair Strategy

Drew Priest

Graduated: May 2024

Placement: US Air Force

MS Thesis Title: Developing Methods of Characterizing, Evaluating, & Optimizing Additively Manufactured Metals for High-Temperature Hypersonic Applications

Liam Ward

Graduated: May 2024

Placement: Leidos Dynetics

MS Thesis Title: A Computational Assessment of the Design and Tolerancing of Joints for Thermal Protection Systems in Hypersonic Vehicles

Kyle Jung

Graduated: May 2024

Placement: Leidos Dynetics

Non-Thesis Research Topic: Transient Liquid Phase Surface Remelting for Smoothing AM Surfaces

Sidharth Krishnamoorthi

Graduated: August 2022

MS Thesis Title: Modeling the fatigue response of additively manufactured Ti-6Al-4V with prior 𝜷 boundaries using crystal plasticity finite element methods

Paul Gardner

Graduated: May 2022

Placement: Royal Australian Air Force

MS Thesis Title: Assessment of Ti-6Al-4V laser clad repair

Joe O'Gara

Graduated: December 2021

Placement: Royal Australian Air Force

MS Thesis Title: Analysis of Mode I fatigue crack growth in carbon fibre reinforced polymer laminates

Alejandra Ortiz

Graduated: August 2021

Placement: MITO Materials Solutions

MS Thesis Title: Slow crack growth criteria for continuous fiber composite laminates

Samuel Noone

Graduated: December 2019

Placement: Royal Australian Air Force

MS Thesis Title: Analysis of Laser Clad Repaired Ti-6Al-4V Fatigue Life

Alexandra Mallory

Graduated: May 2019

Placement: Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific

MS Thesis Title: On the development of an open-source preprocessing framework for finite element simulation

Michael Waddell

Graduated: December 2018

Placement: Royal Australian Air Force

MS Thesis Title: Investigation of Short Fatigue Crack Growth and Damage Tolerance in Additive Manufactured Ti-6Al-4V

Priya Ravi

Graduated: December 2017

Placement: Purdue University - Professional Master's Program

Non-Thesis: Research Topic: High Energy X-ray Diffraction applied to closure effects in small crack growth

Stephen Carter

Graduated: December 2017

Placement: Royal Australian Air Force

MS Thesis Title: Measuring Fatigue Crack Deflections via Cracking of Constituent Particles in AA7050-T7451 Rolled Plate via In-Situ X-ray synchrotron Computed Micro-Tomography

Alexander W. Finch

Graduated: December 2017

Placement: Tri-D (start-up co-founder)

MS Thesis Title: Characterization of Porosity Defects in Selectiverly Laser Melted IN718 and Ti-6Al-4V via Synchrotron X-ray Computed Tomography

Daniel James Chadwick

Graduated: December 2016

Placement: Royal Australian Air Force

MS Thesis Title: Mechanism of Shot Peening Enhancement for the Fatigue Performance of AA7050-T7451

Seth Kijewski

Graduated: May 2016

Placement: The Aerospace Corporation

Non-Thesis: Research Topic: Characterization of fiber length distributions in composites

Lena Huynh

Graduated: December 2015

Placement: Royal Australian Air Force

MS Thesis Title: Fatigue Behavior of Complex Geometries Produced via Additive Manufacturing

Ajey Venkataraman

Graduated: May 2015

Placement: Agronne National Lab

Non-Thesis Research Topic: Grain boundary sliding

Javier Esquivel

Graduated: December 2014

Placement: Boeing

MS Thesis Title: Digital Image Correlation of Heterogeneous Deformations in Polycrystalline Materials with Electron Backscatter Diffraction

Dr. Andrea Rovinelli

Graduated: May 2014

Placement: PhD program - Purdue University

MS Thesis Title: Influence of Microstructure Variability on Short Crack Growth Behavior MS Research Performed at Purdue University and degree was granted at University of Bologna, Italy

Matt Durbin

Graduated: December 2013

Placement: Royal Australian Air Force

MS Thesis Title: Assessing Variability in Microstructural Influence of Fatigue Crack Growth Behavior

Post-Doctoral Alumni

Dr. Bhisham Sharma

Project: Uncertainty Quantification in the Characterization of Fiber Orientation and Length Distributions of Long Fiber Reinforced Composites January - August 2016

Project: Response Surface and Decision Making based on Machining Simulations

Placement: Faculty member at Wichita State University

January - August 2014

Dr. Alberto Mello

Project: Heterogeneous deformation through high resolution digital image correlation of: (i) Ni-based superalloys during high temperature fatigue, (ii) corrosion of AA7050, and (iii) Ti-6Al-4V at high R ratio fatigue

Placement: Faculty member at Embry Riddle University

July 2014 - August 2018

Dr. Burak Bal

Project: FE-Based Machining Simulations

Placement: Faculty member at Abdullah Gul University

July 2015 - January 2016

Dr. Leslie Mushongera

Project: Fatigue behavior of additively manufactured materials and phase field modeling of substructure during fatigue loading

Placement: Faculty member at University of Nevada, Reno

October 2017 - July 2018

Dr. Quan (Jason) Zhou

Project: Development of high-throughput high-energy X-ray diffraction microscope at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) inside Argonne National Laboratory

Placement: Post-doc at the University of Utah / Hitachi America

July 2019 - July 2020

Dr. Imad Hanhan

Project: Investigating damage in fiber reinforced composites via X-ray tomography

Placement: Pratt & Whitney

May 2020 - July 2021

Dr. Ritwik Bandyopadhyay

Project: Modeling framework to unify the treatment of Type I, Type II, and Type III residual stresses and high energy X-ray diffraction microscopy characterization

Placement: Faculty member at IIT Dehli

June 2020 - June 2022