Junior Faculty Award Mentors

The following professors have offered to participate as mentors for the AIST Foundation Junior Faculty Award.  Feel free to contact them to request their assistance.

Laura N. Bartlett, Missouri University of Science & Technology, AIST Foundation Steel Professor
Areas of Interest:

  • Steel casting, liquid metal processing, and solidification phenomena

  • Thermodynamics and kinetics of phase transformations

  • Microstructure/mechanical property relationships

  • Development of advanced high strength steels


Emmanuel De Moor, Colorado School of Mines, AIST Foundation Steel Professor
Areas of Interest:

  • Ferrous physical metallurgy

  • Thermodynamics

  • Steel product metallurgy

  • Direct reduced iron


Nilesh Kumar, The University of Alabama
Areas of Interest:

  • Processing-microstructure-mechanical property correlation in advanced metallic materials such as advanced high strength steels

  • Additive manufacturing

  • Hybrid manufacturing

  • Friction stir welding and processing of advanced metallic materials

  • Stress corrosion cracking

  • High-temperature plastic deformation (Creep and creep-fatigue)

  • Micro-mechanisms of plastic deformation in ultrafine grained and nano-crystalline metallic materials (such as Al alloys, Mg alloys, High entropy alloys, next generation steels, Ti-alloys, Ni-base superalloys)


Paul C. Lynch, Penn State University- Erie, The Behrend College, AIST Foundation Steel Professor
Areas of Interest:

  • Steel Casting

  • Processing and Properties of High Strength Steels

  • Microstructure Development in High Strength Steels


Ronald J. O'Malley, Missouri University of Science & Technology
Areas of Interest:

  • Steelmaking, continuous casting, solidification & heat transfer

  • High temperature physical chemistry, thermodynamics & kinetics

  • Interfacial phenomena, gas-liquid & gas-solid reactions

  • Thin slab & strip casting, mold fluxes & slags

  • Steel manufacture, quality defects & causes


Jingjing Qing, Associate Professor, Georgia Southern University
Areas of Interest:

  • Steel heat treatment
  • Steel microstructure 
  • Solidification of steel
  • Green manufacturing and sustainability


Von L. Richards, Missouri University of Science & Technology
Areas of Interest:

  • Casting and liquid metal processing


Paul G. Sanders, Michigan Technological University, AIST Foundation Steel Professor
Areas of Interest:

  • Alloy (Fe, Al, Ni, Cu) and process design using computational methods and pilot-scale experiments coupled with adaptive optimization

  • Project-based undergraduate design course development and teaching


John G. Speer, Colorado School of Mines
Areas of Interest:

  • Steel microstructure

  • Product development


Brian G. Thomas, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Areas of Interest:

  • Metals processing simulation, focusing on continuous casting of steel and related processes

  • Clean steel production

  • Modeling of multiphysics/multiscale phenomena including solidification, fluid flow, and stress analysis


Brian Webler, Carnegie Mellon University, AIST Foundation Steel Professor
Areas of Interest:

  • Liquid steel refining and non-metallic inclusion control

  • Solidification and microstructure development after casting

  • Additive manufacturing of ferrous alloys

  • Applications of machine learning in metallurgy


Mingzhu Xu, Georgia Southern University, AIST Foundation Steel Professor
Area of Interest:

  • Steel melting, treating and solidification

  • Steel microstructure

  • Steel heat treatment

  • Casting process simulation

  • Process improvement


Chenn Q. Zhou, Purdue University Calumet
Areas of Interest:

  • Simulation and visualization

  • Combustion

  • Multiphase reacting flows

  • Heat transfer

  • Fluid flows

  • Air pollution control