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About Me
About Me
I am a postdoctoral researcher in Professor Allison M. Beese's group at the Pennsylvania State University. I received my PhD from the California Institute of Technology in the Materials Science program, where I worked with Professor Katherine T. Faber in the fields of ceramic fracture mechanics and phase field model verification. I utilized synchrotron X-rays to obtain high-quality microstructural and macroscopic information on crack growth and material response during fracture, reporting some of the first datasets on in-situ, 3D crack paths in ceramics. Another interest of mine is in cultural heritage characterization and degradation prevention in artistic and cultural materials. I graduated with my B.S. (summa cum laude) in Materials Science and Engineering, minoring in the History of Art, from Cornell University, Ithaca N.Y., in 2020, where my research was centered on characterizing seventeenth- and eighteenth-century artistic paper through signal processing and imaging. Additionally, I am a 2020 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and a 2021 attendee of the National School on X-Ray and Neutron Scattering, hosted by Argonne and Oak Ridge National Labs, as well as the author of a Pushcart Prize-nominated short story and a poetry chapbook, among other non-academic publications.
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August 2026: I began a position as a postdoctoral researcher at Penn State University in the Beese Group.
May 2026: I defended my dissertation, "In-Situ Synchrotron Studies of Microstructural Effects of Brittle Fracture", and received my PhD!
April 2026: My research was published in Acta Materialia in the article "In-situ visualization of a growing brittle crack in aluminum oxynitride using synchrotron X-rays and the double-cleavage drilled compression geometry".
March 2025: I presented my research "Microstructural Impact on Brittle Fracture Paths Investigated via High-Energy Synchrotron Techniques" at the TMS Spring 2025 Conference in Las Vegas, UT.
August 2024: I presented my research "The Influence of Microstructure on Brittle Ceramic Fracture as Investigated by In-Situ Synchrotron Techniques" as a talk at the Gordon Research Seminar on Solid-State Studies in Ceramics: Bridging the Nanoscale and the Macroscale: Microstructural Origins of Engineered Properties in Ceramics and as a poster at the associated Gordon Research Conference on Solid-State Studies in Ceramics: Merging Atomistic and Continuum Analysis of Defects and Interfaces Across Varying Length Scales.
April 2024: I presented my research "Multimodal Synchrotron X-Ray Techniques for Visualizing 3D Brittle Fracture" as a poster at the Materials Research Society (MRS) Spring 2024 Meeting & Exhibit in Seattle, WA. See it here!
November 2023: My short story "Magnetic North" was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by Soft Star Magazine.
January 2023: I presented my research, "Microstructural Effects on Polycrystalline Ceramic Fracture as Revealed via Synchrotron Radiation", at the 47th International Conference and Exposition on Advanced Ceramics and Composites (ICACC 2023) in Daytona Beach, FL.
December 2022: My first poetry chapbook, I Left a Piece of Me in a Dream and Now I Don't Fit Together Anymore, is available now from Bottlecap Press.
May 2022: I passed my PhD candidacy exam.
March 2021: My undergraduate research was published in the International Journal for Digital Art History: "Moldmate identification in pre-19th century European paper using quantitative analysis of watermarks, chain line intervals, and laid line density". (S.F. Gorske, C.R. Johnson, Jr., W.A. Sethares, M.H. Ellis, P. Messier).
March 2020: I was awarded the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
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