News

April 2024: Dr. Agrawal receives tenure and promotion to Associate Professor (news link). Dr. Agrawal also received the Junior faculty research excellence award from the Alumni Council (news link). 

April 2024: Congratulations to Dr. Roberto Perera for successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis. His work focused on developing new machine-learning tools for tackling problems in material microstructure characterization and material failure prediction. We are proud of his accomplishments and wish him all the best for his new adventures at NAWCWD.

Mar 2024: We thank the National Science Foundation for supporting our work through the Early Career Faculty Development award. The award will support our work on concurrent multiscale methods to study stable nanocrystalline Cu-Ta alloys and use graph neural networks to develop reduced-order models for shock loading. (news link)

Nov 2023: Congratulations to Siddharth Sriram for successfully defending his MS thesis. His work focused on understanding the role of microstructure and porosity on the dynamic deformation behavior of additively manufactured 17-4 steel. We wish him all the best for his future.

Aug 2023: Dr. Agrawal is working with Dr. Irene Beyerlien (UCSB) and Dr. Abigail Hunter (Los Alamos National Laboratory) to lead a special issue on "Novel Computational Approaches for Bridging Length and Time scales: Addressing Challenges in Modeling Processes, Characterization, and Performance of Metals and Alloys" in Modeling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering (MSMSE). More information about the scope and deadlines can be found here (link). 

May 2023: We are grateful to Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for their award supporting the development of the moving window concurrent atomistic continuum scheme and its validation through experimental observations for high entropy alloys. As part of this award, Dr. Agrawal and Amrit Aryal will spend the summer of 2023 at LANL, working with scientists at MST, T, and XCP divisions.

April 2023: Dr. Agrawal presented the exciting work done by lab members at the Mach conference in Baltimore. Dr. Agrawal was also invited to share our work and meet faculty and students at the Civil Engineering department at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. 

April 2023: Congratulations to Alexander Davis for defending his Ph.D. dissertation! We wish him the best for his future. 

April 2023: Congratulations to Alton Stoute for receiving the prestigious SMART scholarship from the Department of Defense through the Army Research Laboratories. Alton is extending the concurrent atomistic continuum scheme, developed in the lab, to study shock interaction at grain boundaries (news link)

March 2023: We are grateful to Army Research Office for their award to support our efforts to understand shock wave propagation and effects in high entropy alloys using the concurrent atomistic continuum method. 

January 2023: We are partnering with nou Systems Inc. and Sandia National Laboratories in a joined project to develop a novel pre-compression mechanism to for a Split Hopkinson Tension Bar to study dynamic failure of brittle materials. We are grateful for the US Army for providing funds to enable this collaboration.

November 2022: Dr. Agrawal was invited to share our exciting work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and University of Washington (Mechanical Engineering). Dr. Agrawal shared the work done by students on concurrent atomistic continuum modeling, machine learning, planetary impacts, and experimental mechanics.

August 2022: Alexander Davis was invited to present at Los Alamos National Lab in the XCP division for his work on moving window concurrent multiscale modeling of shock wave propagation. Congratulations Alex!

August 2022: We have new manuscripts published and under review. Our group presented in TMS, Mach and USNCTAM conferences and we have presentations scheduled in SES and MMM conferences. Our group has grown to five PhD students and two undergraduate students. 

October 2021: Roberto Perera receives fourth place (out of 140 participants) in the College of Engineering Graduate Research Showcase (story). He presented his work on "Graph neural networks for emulation crack propagation and coalescence in brittle materials" (arXiv). Photo (link) by Joe McAdory.

October 2021: Brayden Noh receives the grand prize in 2021 AGU Michael H. Freilich Student Visualization Competition for his work on the effect of porosity on the changes in asteroid shape as it travels through the atmosphere before impact.

July 2021: Leticia De Marchi successfully defends her PhD dissertation. Congratulations to Leticia and our best wishes to her for future!

April 2021: Roberto Perera receives the prestigious Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation (SMART) scholarship through the Department of Defense (DoD). He will work with Naval Air Weapons Stations at China Lake (CA) to incorporate machine learning ideas in solid mechanics and materials research. (news link)

March 2021: Leticia De Marchi receives the Outstanding PhD student award through the Geosciences Advisory Board (GAB). 

June 2020: We are grateful for the National Science Foundation (NSF) for their award to support the development of an integrated approach to predict damage evolution in biological organisms due to external stressors. This work will be done in partnership with Dr. Haruka Wada (link) who will serve as the PI for the project. (AU News feature here)

May 2020: We are grateful for the National Science Foundation (NSF) for their award to support the development of concurrent multiscale framework to study shock waves and shock interaction with microstructure. (AU News feature here).

May 2020: Leticia De Marchi receives the prestigious NASA Astrobiology Early Career Collaboration award. This award will allow her to visit and collaborate with Dr. Jens Ormoe at CAB INTA, Spain.

February 2020: Leticia De Marchi receives the Lunar and Planetary Institute Career Development Award. She will receive the award at the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

August 2019: Roberto Perera joins MML to pursue his PhD in Aerospace Engineering. He is studying ductile fracture propagation in additively manufactured metallic materials.

August 2019: Maddie Harper and Dalton Shaub join MML to conduct Split-Hopkinson Bar experiments on additively manufactured metallic alloys. Their work is supported by HTSI intership program.

April 2019: Alexander Davis receives the prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research fellowship for his graduate studies.

April 2019: Alexander Davis receives a prestigious National Defense Science and Engineering (NDSEG) fellowship for his graduate studies. He is developing a moving window molecular dynamics formulation to study shock wave propagation through atomistic methods.

August 2018: Leticia De Marchi joins MML to pursue her PhD in Geosciences. She is studying shallow marine impact craters and the role of water in their formation.

May 2018: Auburn University Intramural Grants Program awarded to Vinamra Agrawal and David King (Geosciences, AU) to study Wetumpka Impact Crater and the its formation.

January 2018: Dakota Newsome joins MML as undergraduate researcher. He is working on assembly and calibration of the Kolsky Bar Setup.