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Rensselaer Professor Daniel Lewis Receives NSF CAREER Award
Young Faculty Researcher at Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute To Investigate Materials Structure With
Big Impact on Performance of Metals and
Ceramics
Daniel Lewis
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Daniel Lewis, assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and
Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has won a
prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER)
from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Lewis will use the projected five-year, $630,000 award to
understand how materials behave at high temperatures.
“Dr. Lewis is an outstanding researcher and academic, and we
are exceptionally proud of him for being selected to receive an
NSF CAREER Award,” said David Rosowsky, dean of the School of Engineering at
Rensselaer. “CAREER Awards are reserved for the nation’s most
promising young researchers. In addition to his robust research
platform, Dan heads the Institute’s leading-edge Fuel Cell and
Hydrogen Research Lab, and continues to grow the successful ASM
Materials Day Camp at Rensselaer as a vehicle for inspiring
local high school students to pursue careers in science,
technology, engineering, and math. We applaud Dan’s
achievements, and look forward to his many future
successes.”
With his CAREER project, titled “Grain Growth and
Topological Evolution of Polycrystals,” Lewis will use a new
approach to investigate the long-standing problem of grain
growth in metallic and ceramic materials. Certain properties of
these materials are strongly dependent on the size of the
grains, or crystallites, that make up the bulk material.
Environmental factors, such as exposure to high temperatures,
can impact the grain size over time. In some cases, this change
in grain size can lead to extensive damage or failure in metals
or ceramics. Lewis is seeking to conduct simulations using the
Rensselaer supercomputing center, the Computational Center for
Nanotechnology Innovations (CCNI), and physical experiments to
characterize and better understand the kinetics and
thermodynamics of grain growth in metallic materials.
The research program will include participation from high
school, undergraduate, and graduate students, including some
undergraduate student-led research projects, Lewis said.
The CAREER Award is given to faculty members at the
beginning of their academic careers and is one of NSF’s most
competitive awards, placing emphasis on high-quality research
and novel education initiatives.
Lewis joined the Rensselaer faculty in 2005, and now leads
the Institute’s Physical
Metallurgy and Computational Microstructure Lab, as well as
the Fuel Cell and Hydrogen
Research Lab. He is also a member of the university’s Center for Future
Energy Systems.
Additionally, Lewis directs and oversees the Materials
Day Camp at Rensselaer, a week-long summer camp for
inquisitive high school juniors and seniors. The camp,
sponsored by the ASM Materials Education Foundation, the
Eastern New York Chapter of ASM, the Minerals, Metals &
Materials Society (TMS) Foundation, General Electric, Knolls
Atomic Power Lab, and the Hudson-Mohawk Chapter of TMS, has
been popular since its introduction at Rensselaer in 2005.
Lewis received his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral
degrees, in materials science and engineering, from Lehigh
University.
For additional information on Lewis’ research at Rensselaer,
visit:
For additional information on the Materials Day Camp at
Rensselaer, visit:
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Published
February 15,
2011 |
Contact: Michael Mullaney
Phone: (518) 276-6161
E-mail: mullam@rpi.edu |
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