Prof. Chandran Led Team Receives ARPA-E Ultimate Grant Award

A University of Utah team lead by Dr. Ravi Chandran, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, which includes Dr. Taylor Sparks, Professor of Materials Science & Engineering, and Dr. Wenda Tan, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering has been awarded $800,000 as the Phase-I finding form ARPA-E Ultimate program and involves the development of next generation high temperature alloys.

Current generation of high temperature alloys for aircraft jet turbines are dominated by nickel base alloys, but their capabilities are limited to about 1100C turbine operating temperature. Alloys for higher temperature, about 1300C, inevitably require new alloys based on refractory metals. The team will use physical metallurgy principles for alloy design, assisted by machine learning, CALPHAD phase diagram simulations, phase field modeling and rapid powder metallurgy processing of alloys to make new alloys and prototype samples to meet the ARPA-E specifications.

The newly funded research project begins May 2021.

Dr. Sparks to speak at TEDxSalt Lake City

The University of Utah Department of Materials Science and Engineering is proud to announce that associate professor Taylor Sparks has been chosen to be a speaker at this year’s TEDxSaltLakeCity event on Sept. 21 at Kingsbury Hall on the university campus in Salt Lake City.

Sparks, whose research is focused on new materials for energy applications such as batteries, thermoelectrics, thermal barrier coatings and more, will be speaking on materials informatics, the process of using big data and machine learning to help researchers solve materials science challenges. The talk, titled “Striking a New Balance in Materials Discovery,” will dive into about how scientists can leverage information stored in materials data and compare that to how they traditionally discover new materials, which can largely be from trial-and-error.

TEDxSaltLake City describes itself as the “Wasatch Front’s leading platform for citizens to present and explore their ideas, stories, and creative solutions.” This year’s lineup will include 14 speakers and six musical acts.