Shahani wins two society awards

Recently, Ashwin Shahani won the Bradley Stoughton Award for Young Teachers. The award was established by ASM International in 1952. It recognizes and fosters excellence in the teaching of materials science, materials engineering, design, and processing to encourage young teachers in this field. The award is open to any teacher of materials science, materials engineering, design, processing and related fields, under the age of 35. Only one award is given annually. Shahani’s citation reads, “For creativity and extraordinary effort in teaching undergraduate and graduate students, for providing innovative programming in materials science and engineering to underrepresented youth.”

Shahani also earned the Frontiers of Materials Award from the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS). This award is given to a top-performing early career professional capable of organizing a Frontiers of Materials Event comprising a hot or emergent technical topic at the TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition. As a winner, Shahani will organize an event on “Intermetallic Alloys at the Edge of Complexity: Structural and Kinetic Aspects,” which is scheduled to take place at the TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition, March 19-23, 2023 in San Diego, California.

Read more at The University of Michigan  →

Grad students win major awards

In early November 2021, Jiwoong Kang, Eli Rotman, and Geordie Lindemann participated in the inaugural MMRI poster session, chaired by Prof. Shahani himself. Geordie (left) won the second place award for his poster titled, “Complexity and evolution of a three-phase eutectic pattern uncovered by 4D X-ray nano-tomography.” A few days later, Paul Chao and Xinyi Zhou took part in the Engineering Research Symposium. For his work on “Pseudo-4D characterization of growth and form of Al-Al2Cu eutectic colonies,” Paul (right) took home two awards: first place in the scientific visualization competition and second place in the graduate advanced research poster competition. Congratulations to all! Well done!

Peering into the formation of "forbidden crystals"

In a new paper published in Physical Review Letters, we track in situ the solid‑state formation of metastable and dendritic quasicrystals. On the basis of our time‑resolved transmission electron microscopy experiments and supporting molecular dynamics simulations, we provide an atomic picture of how periodic crystalline (approximant) structures evolve into quasicrystalline structures in terms of their structural similarity and how the interface between the quasicrystal and approximant supports the formation of dendrites (tree-like structures). Ultimately, we show that a 13-atom icosahedral motif is dominant upon rapid annealing, and if a sufficient population of these motifs exist, they could guide phase selection. Such motifs are the essential building blocks for quasicrystal growth from a solid or a liquid precursor. Congratulations Insung and Parsa!

Read more at University of Michigan  →