News

Dom was recently named a 2018-2019 ARCS Foundation Scholar. He will present a poster in Washington DC on October 25 describing his undergraduate research projects on oxidation of ultra-high temperature ceramics. Congratulations!

Bekah, Beth and KJ recently participated in Dechema's EFC-Workshop 2018: High Temperature Corrosion under Complex Conditions, Deposits and Salts: Towards Greener Energy in Frankfurt, Germany. Bekah and Beth presented research on CMAS resistance in EBCs, and KJ presented his work on Type II hot corrosion of aluminized MCrAlY coating.

Victoria Minns visits us from Cranfield University for 6 weeks. She will be conducting alloy oxidation and hot corrosion experiments in collaboration with our group. Welcome!
Read more about Victoria's research here.

Beth heads off to the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart for 6 months to work with Professor Joachim Maier, learning new methods in Solid State Ionics.

Lavina, Rachel, and Lucas all successfully presented their PhD research proposals to their committees this past week. Congratulations to all!

The Opila group is growing! Undergraduate researchers Dominic Pinnisi, Donya Zargham and Nathaniel Craft have recently joined us and will be working on a variety of high temperature oxidation projects. Niquana Smith joins us with a BS in Chemistry from Denison University and will be working toward her Ph.D. in Materials Science and engineering. Welcome!

A new paper on Bonnie's work on the oxidation of SiC fibers in the presence of boron nitride has been published. From the abstract: "Oxides formed from Sylramic iBN fibers were typically higher in boron concentration, which led to initial rapid oxidation rates that were 3 to 10 times faster than observed for pure SiC." Read paper here.

Maddy's research on the "Thermal Stability of MBE Synthesized MoSe2 in UHV" took second place at Engineering Science and Research Design Symposium this year. (Read more about the Engineering Science program here). Maddy also won first place in the UVA Undergraduate Research Network Symposium and the 2018 Outstanding Engineering Science Student Award! Congratulations, Maddy!

Congratulations to Kendall! Her research on tantalum oxide stability in high-temperature steam is now published in The Spectra, UVA's Undergraduate Engineering and Science Research Journal. Read article here.

Valentina was very busy at the IYNCM recently held in Bariloche, Argentina, March 11-17, 2018. She was manager of the technical track "Advanced Nuclear Systems" and manager of the workshop "Lessons from Fukushima: How material selection can prevent future accidents." (See description here). She is also a member of the board of directors of IYNC and a member of the communication committee since 2016.