Sara F. Gorske

 

About Me


I am a PhD candidate in my third year at the California Institute of Technology in the Materials Science program. I currently work with Professor Katherine T. Faber in the fields of ceramic fracture mechanics and phase field model verification. My other primary interest 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.


 

News

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.