2021 is coming to a close, and the snows have (finally) started to fall in Golden as the fall semester wraps up.
Congratulations to the Mines Keramos chapter for bringing home the Most Outstanding Chapter award this year; in addition, CCAC student and Mines Keramos chapter president Aidan Ravnik was elected to serve as the National Student Representative for Keramos this year. Also falling under Keramos activities and led by CCAC graduate student and CoorsTek Fellow Shannon Rogers, we now have a small pottery studio in the CCAC! There are two throwing wheels in HH351 and a kiln in the hot shop. Please reach out to Shannon for more information.
The most striking change around the Center has to be the incredible transformation of the tidiness and organization of the CCAC labs. I want to offer a huge thank you to all of the students who have helped with this and to Amanda Bellafatto in particular for spearheading these efforts.
We have several reasons to be optimistic about 2022, including gradual expansion of our powder processing laboratory capabilities (stay tuned for more details as they develop) and additional ceramics-focused faculty positions open and accepting applications (flyer / job website postings). Our students continue to do terrific work, and we're all excited about a gradual return to in-person conference and related travel and collaborations.
I hope that you're all able to enjoy a well deserved break and hopefully spend time relaxing with family and friends over the break.
Geoff Brennecka
Associate Professor, MME
Director, CCAC
Co-Director, ADAPT
Immediately after graduation, Elizabeth will be starting as a post-doc at Sandia National Laboratory working with the photovoltaic systems group.
Featured CCAC Graduate Student: Brian Davis
Brian Davis is advised by Dr. Ivar Reimanis and works on contact damage in silicate glasses from a top-down solid mechanics perspective. Brian has an interesting past as well as an exciting future trajectory. While at Mines he has gained insightful experiences and become a regular user of the glass shop during his free time. To read details about Brian's research and more click here.
CCAC Welcomes Assistant Professor Dr. Megan Holtz
This August, Megan Holtz started as an assistant professor in the Department of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. Previously, she was an NRC Postdoctoral Associate in the Materials Measurement Laboratory at NIST and as graduate student and then as a postdoc and at Cornell University. Her research aims to control and understand materials across a broad range of relevant length scales – including crystal structure, interfaces, surfaces, morphology, and even including local atomic displacements. Dr. Holtz's uses scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and oxide molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) to relate highly controlled structures with their properties, to further drive materials development for next-generation functional and energy-related materials.
MINES CHAPTER OF KERAMOS IS AWARDED CHAPTER OF EXCELLENCE AWARD
The 2021 Keramos Chapter of Excellence award went to the Colorado School of Mines Keramos chapter. "The main function of Keramos is to promote and emphasize scholarship and character in the thoughts of students in ceramics, to stimulate mental development, and to promote interest in the professional aspects of ceramic engineering, technology, and science."1 The photo to the right shows Aidan Ravnik holding the Most Excellent Chapter award. Aidan was recently elected to serve as the National Student Representative for Keramos!
See the Mines' Kermos Annual Report here.
Find out more about Keramos here.
THE REBELS OF DISTRIBUTED POWER
A recent ARPA-E blog post highlighted Dr. Ryan O'Hayre and Dr. Neal Sullivan's groundbreaking work in the area of Fuel Cells.
The focus of O’Hayre and Sullivan’s seven year-long ARPA-E grant was protonic ceramic fuel cells (PCFCs) for DG applications that could increase the stability of the grid, provide significant cost savings, and result in fewer greenhouse gas emissions compared with centralized power plants while avoiding transmission losses throughout the grid.
2021 CCAC Graduate Student Conference a
Great Success!
The 2021 CCAC Graduate Student Conference was held on August 17th and 18th, 2021 at the American Mountaineering Center in Golden, CO. The conference organizers were: Amanda Bellafatto, Daniel Drury, Sami El Hageali, Dylan Jennings, and Jai Sharma.
Invited speakers included: Dr. Amber Tremper – Corning Inc. and Dr. Michael Toney – University of Colorado Boulder.
Above: CCAC Director Geoff Brennecka at the CCAC Conference
A big thank you to all the conference sponsors! To see a list of the conference sponsors Click here.
Above: CoorsTek Fellow, Yewon Shin, presents at the CCAC Conference
William Callahan wins the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) John & Barbara Yellott Award
The John & Barbara Yellott Award is given to a graduate student concentrating on solar energy in a recognized institution of higher learning.1
William Callahan, co-advised by Dr. Ryan O'Hayre and Dr. Michael Sanders, was awarded the John And Barbara Yellott Award for 2021. Congratulations William!
Dr. Brian Gorman Publishes:
“There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”
In the famous lecture by Prof. Richard Feynman, he considers the ideas that we could image and even manipulate matter one atom at a time. A new book published by Prof. Gorman and his colleagues, Dr. Tom Kelly (Steam Instruments) and Prof. Simon Ringer (Univ. Sydney), explores these ideas using current (and future) materials characterization methods. Atomic Scale Analytical Tomography is a proposed idea where we could measure an atom’s position with picometer spatial resolution and also its nuclear mass to better than a single neutron. The book gives insight into the history behind atomic scale imaging, explores how ASAT might be possible using current technology, and finally discusses the implications behind what we could accomplish if such a technology were realized.
Jake Huang wins the “Best Poster Prize”
At the (virtual) Solid-State Proton Conductors conference, September 27 - October 1, 2021, CCAC graduate student Jake Huang, co-advised by Dr. Ryan O'Hayre and Dr. Neal Sullivan, won Best Poster prize for his work on high-throughput impedance analysis of oxide electrocatalysts.
Jake's poster was entitled, "High-Throughput Impedance Analysis of Ba(Co,Fe,Zr,Y)O3-δ Electrocatalysts".
CCAC Graduate Students Awarded the Lohmiller TA Award for AY20-21
Congratulations to CCAC graduate students Michael Knight (advised by Dr. Ivar Reimanis) and Jake Ivy (advised by Dr. Geoff Brennecka) for being selected by the Student Awards Committee as winners of the Lohmiller TA Award for AY20-21!
Award winners demonstrated the following:
assisted in classes with more than 5 students
assisted in required courses and/or classes with large populations
had strong interaction with students
had significant impact on the class as a whole
Each recipient received an award of $500. Well done!
