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Cultivating engineers and opportunities

A conversation with Gabrielle Gaustad, dean of the Inamori School of Engineering at Alfred University

Young women entering the Inamori School of Engineering at Alfred University do not have to search far for a role model in a traditionally male-dominated field. The dean of the school, Gabrielle Gaustad, was once a first-year student there herself.

“I’m a product of our program: a ceramic engineering undergrad from Alfred University,” she says. “Alfred has a great record of having women in the program. It was great for me as an undergrad to have a lot of female faculty and students around me. I didn’t see a gap until I got out in the workforce.”

Gaustad earned a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then worked in the aluminum and steel industries from both the waste management and manufacturing sides. She describes this time as “eye-opening” in terms of gender imbalances. Today, she sees diversity as something that needs to begin “even earlier than college” with outreach efforts that create more opportunities for students in less affluent school districts that are not equipped to offer advanced placement studies in subjects such as chemistry and physics.

Working to overcome disadvantages

“Those educational gaps probably start pretty young, and by the time the students enter college, there is not a ton we can do about those gaps,” she says. “We have a couple programs for students that are a little bit on the bubble. We want to admit them, but we’re worried that they might not have everything they need. We have some summer programming that brings them on campus early to see if we can identify gaps and try to fill them before they start as an engineer in the fall.”

But economic circumstances can continue to have an impact even when students are succeeding in the program. There are relocation costs associated with accepting internships, such as securing housing and transportation. The school has tried to address these challenges through a summer research opportunity program that provides housing and a competitive stipend to cover other costs.

“I think that program has increased accessibility, so that if you have an economically disadvantaged background, you can take advantage of that opportunity,” Gaustad says. “And now we’re seeing a lot more internships that are providing housing along with the stipend, which again lowers barriers to accessibility for all students.”

Powering up next-generation engineers

The school keeps track of which industries are hiring and which have seen student recruitment decline. Big growth sectors right now include aerospace, renewable energy, and semiconductors, including advanced ceramics and glass or “anything computer or semiconductor adjacent,” Gaustad says. Conversely, there are reduced opportunities for students hoping to enter automotive and traditional manufacturing.

Gaustad’s students prioritize ongoing training and professional development, although the specifics of what that can mean varies by student and industry.

“A lot of our engineers will end up going through some kind of management track, but maybe they didn’t have opportunities to take a business or management course during their undergraduate study,” she says. “So, they’re looking for leadership training, mentorship, and management training because that shows you have a pathway toward leadership or management roles.”

Championing the environment and entrepreneurship

As they transition from campus to careers, Gaustad sees students demonstrating a “super strong interest” in culture that includes sustainability. Plus, they can see through greenwashing.

“Companies that are using ESG [environmental, social, governance] metrics purely for marketing purposes? They’re pretty savvy about that kind of thing,” she says.

That awareness dovetails with her own work, which includes a decade and a half dedicated to recycling materials. At Alfred, that translates to a large glass recycling project conducted in connection with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. She also works on a project with the Army Research Laboratory to develop ultrahigh-temperature ceramic materials. Gaustad estimates that 40 undergraduates worked on those and other projects during summer 2024.

Students also enter school-organized pitch competitions to raise interest in entrepreneurship and working at startups.

“A few students have had success with that—starting a company, making some products, and doing well,” Gaustad says. “We’re probably just touching the tip of the iceberg, and we could grow that substantially.”

From classroom to commercialization

A conversation with Michel Barsoum, Distinguished Professor of materials science and engineering at Drexel University

On July 3, 2024, Drexel University announced that One-D Nano, a nanomaterial clean technology company, would receive a $150,000 investment from the Drexel University Innovation Fund, which was created to provide start-up capital for the commercialization of innovations and technologies that originated at the school.⁴

The news follows the discovery in 2022 of one-dimensional nanofilaments by Michel Barsoum, Distinguished Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Hussein Badr, then a doctoral researcher in the Layered Solids Group, which Barsoum leads.

As the July 3 announcement explains, they believe these nanofilaments, which they labeled 1DL, have the capacity to “help sunlight glean hydrogen from water for months at a time to significantly reduce the cost of green hydrogen.”

Barsoum is co-founder and technical advisor to One-D Nano, which was launched to commercialize 1DLs with his postdoctoral fellow, Greg Schwenk, who will serve as the company’s CEO. Recently, Schwenk was also chosen from a field of more than 1,000 applicants for the prestigious Activate Fellowship,⁵ a program with a rich history of cultivating success from hard tech startups spun out of university labs. This award will provide Schwenk with roughly $500,000 over two years that he can use to help build up the company.

But 1DL’s potential for environmental impact is just part of the story, in Barsoum’s view. He finds it equally exciting that it is a material that can literally be made in a kitchen at minimal cost.

“The combination of using inexpensive starting material, the ease with which we can make the stuff, and the ease with which we can scale it is quite remarkable,” he says. “We think we can make it in large quantities, and a lot cheaper than any other nanotech out there. That’s the business proposition.”

Encouraging and financing entrepreneurs

The Drexel University Innovation Fund recognizes projects with potential for “addressing the world’s most pressing challenges,” and all returns on investments revert to the fund so they can be awarded to future start-ups.⁶ The program also seeks to provide students with hands-on experience in the venture capital arena. That strategy meshes neatly with the entrepreneurial mindset Barsoum sees in many of his students.

“I think this young generation, even at the undergraduate level, sees that as a possibility,” he says. “They watch other people become millionaires and billionaires at age 30. That is a pretty strong incentive to start a company and sell it.”

He says faculty members are responsible for initiating that innovation, but he also recognizes the importance of institutional and financial backing. Neither form of support was available when he launched start-ups between 10 and 20 years ago, a time that he describes as more ad hoc. Today’s approach aligns with his sense of responsibility for preparing the next generation of scientists to take their place in the world as well as his own professional goal to make a difference in meeting global challenges, such as sequestering CO₂ and rendering non-potable water safe to drink.

Acknowledgment and ambition

Barsoum’s success in making a difference was recognized on June 18, 2024, at a ceremony that marked his induction as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He describes that recognition as “the cherry on the cake” but says curiosity and the desire to “solve big problems” have always been his primary motivations.

“Every day I go to work and shake my head. I can’t believe they pay me to do this,” he says. “I tell my students, ‘You know, graduate school is supposed to be fun. If you’re not having fun, and I’m serious, let me know because something’s wrong.’”

Advances ‘for the benefit of the nation’

A conversation with Chris Heckle, director of Argonne National Laboratory’s Materials Manufacturing Innovation Center

When your origin story begins with the University of Chicago’s work on the Manhattan Project,⁷ what do you do for an encore? Argonne National Laboratory’s answer is “to make an impact—from the atomic to the human to the global scale…on questions and experiments too large for any one institution to do by itself.”

Argonne National Laboratory is one of the 17 U.S. Department of Energy laboratories in the United States. Its 3,400 scientists work on projects with cumulative funding of $1 billion.

In 2022, Argonne formed a new center called the Materials Manufacturing Innovation Center (MMIC). MMIC is but one center within the large national laboratory structure at Argonne, but its focus is manufacturing, particularly in the materials and chemicals processing spaces. Specifically, it serves as the first point of contact between private industry and Argonne’s science and research capabilities, all with an eye toward solving complex problems and assisting manufacturers with their clean energy initiatives.

In less than two years, MMIC has made significant progress in connecting Argonne’s scientists to industry and building strong collaborations between staff members, contractors, visiting scientists, and successful applicants who request access to the labs. Chris Heckle, director of MMIC, offers the example of university students or corporate researchers or engineers who need access to Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source, “which is used to shoot photons, X-rays, and then there can be a lot of characterization in the beam.” Access may be offered at no cost if the applicants plan to publish their results; if not, Argonne charges them an amount equal to cost recovery.

SIDEBAR

Get involved with MMIC

A list of materials available for licensing from Argonne can be found here, and a full list of technologies available for licensing can be found here. Also on the licensing page, a partnership proposal inquiry form is available, plus guidelines for completing the inquiry.

A nine-minute video provides information about how the Materials Manufacturing Innovation Center “partners business with science and research.”

An emphasis on functionality over fantasy

Argonne’s overarching objectives encompass completion of world-class research, education, problem-solving, and strategic initiatives, but not “cool inventions that never see the light of day,” Heckle says.

“They want things to be deployed so that somebody can take advantage of that knowledge for the benefit of the nation,” she explains.

Profitability benchmarks do not figure into the equation because while Argonne’s commitments span technology invention, development, and scale-up, the lab does not commercialize or market the fruits of its R&D. Rather, it licenses intellectual property, and those licenses can be a source of funding for reinvestment in further exploratory work. But there is no sales component to the lab’s activities.

Supporting national sustainability priorities

In keeping with Department of Energy priorities, teams at Argonne have been pursuing innovations in industrial efficiency and decarbonization, with a focus on certain sectors: chemicals, food and beverage (as an outgrowth of agricultural), pulp and paper, cement and concrete, ceramics, and steel. Initially, glass was not an industry of focus, but that is in the process of changing, and the Department of Energy is now investing more funding in helping the glass industry to decarbonize—for example, by seeking methods of melting glass with the use of renewable fuels.

The emphasis on sustainability extends to more efforts in the area of circularity.

“A huge part of circularity is reuse of waste, such as plastic waste that is upcycled into lubricants and oil. That is one aspect of circularity we’re working on,” Heckle says. “Another aspect is lithium-ion battery recycling. Cell phone batteries have been dying for years, but car batteries, large volumes of lithium-ion batteries, are going to start to head toward the landfill. What can and should we be doing about that?” Argonne is pursuing the answer to that question in partnership with other national labs, industry, and academia via its ReCell Center.

In October 2023, the Department of Energy’s Advanced Materials & Manufacturing Technologies Office announced the allocation of $2 million in funding for “eight projects to drive innovation in lithium-ion battery rejuvenation, recycling, and reuse.”⁸ The announcement noted, “The ultimate goal is to reduce the environmental impact of battery production while ensuring a reliable and sustainable supply of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, renewable energy storage, and consumer electronics.”

Bringing AI/ML into the R&D equation

What impact will artificial intelligence and machine learning have on Argonne’s research and development across all its areas of focus?

“The lab is one of a few large supercomputer facilities across the U.S. and the world. Our most recent supercomputer, which is just coming online and being fully tested, is specifically built for artificial intelligence algorithms,” Heckle says.

Another area of focus for AI and machine learning is the Minerals to Materials Supply Chain Facility (METALLIC), which was announced in April 2024 to “establish an innovation ecosystem under a virtual roof that leverages the nation’s leading capabilities for accelerating and de-risking critical minerals and materials technology development and commercialization.”⁹

The $75 million facility is “designed to support the public and private sector in doing the research, development, demonstration, and deployment needed for a resilient, diverse and secure domestic supply of critical minerals and materials needed for clean energy technologies.”

Heckle notes that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has been pushing a national strategy for artificial intelligence, and one of MMIC’s associate lab directors, Rick Stevens, testified on Capitol Hill about artificial intelligence.

“So, we’re a thought leader in the use of AI for materials discovery and materials optimization, and we’re working to embed AI in a lot of the things we do, such as developing algorithms in conjunction with equipment to be able to achieve particular product targets,” Heckle says.