Congratulations to Suhas Eswarappa Prameela on receiving the MEDE-MSA Research Fellowship! This fellowship enables current MEDE graduate students or postdocs the opportunity to participate in research activities at a MSA-affiliated university in the United Kingdom. With this fellowship, Prameela plans to explore the microstructure evolution of binary Magnesium alloys during thermo-mechanical processing. Prameela is a PhD candidate working in the Metals CMRG with Prof. Timothy Weihs. During the fellowship period, Prameela will work with Prof. Joseph Robson in the Department of Materials Engineering at the University of Manchester.
The MEDE-MSA fellowship is only open to graduate students or postdocs funded on MEDE whose principal faculty advisor is a current MEDE principal investigator (PI). The fellowship provides $6,000 (US) to support travel, housing and incidental costs. It is expected that the fellowship will be approximately eight weeks in duration which can be conducted throughout the year.
Building Better Armor: CMEDE Research Showcased in JHU Engineering Magazine
The average soldier carries at least 60 pounds of gear, with some specialized fighters carrying loads almost twice that weight. A significant portion of this is body armor. Typically made of a combination of ceramic and polymer materials, body armor worn by infantry members weighs about 30 pounds.
This equipment is critical for the job, shielding vital organs from the potentially lethal shock of bullets and other projectiles. But even though modern body armor works pretty well for what it’s intended to do, explains Beatriz Medeiros, a third-year materials science and engineering student at the Whiting School, it can be cumbersome.
To lighten soldiers’ loads and to improve their protection within military vehicles, Medeiros is working in the lab of Timothy Weihs, a professor in her department, to develop new types of vehicle armor materials. She recently received the prestigious Undergraduate Research Apprenticeship Program internship, which is co-sponsored by the Army Research Office and the Center for Materials in Extreme Dynamic Environments (CMEDE). CMEDE is the Army’s largest, basic research program focused on improving protection materials for military applications and is located within the Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute. Together, these sources provided the financial support that made it possible for her to continue her research at Johns Hopkins over the summer.
Medeiros is working to produces an alloy which, after proper thermomechanical processing, can form nano-precipitates that can slow down or block dislocations, the atomic-scale defects in materials that are produced and then propagate upon impact.
“A soldier’s job is hard enough,” Medeiros says. “By improving their armor, we’re hoping to make their jobs a little bit easier.”To further strengthen these alloys, Medeiros, under the mentorship of graduate student Suhas Eswarappa Prameela, is exploring different thermomechanical processing methods. These include rolling, which presses the material between two rollers, and equal channel angular extrusion, which pulls it through an L-shaped chamber. Both methods can change the material’s average crystal grain size and precipitate size, which in turn affects its strength.
Congratulations to PhD candidate Suhas Eswarappa Prameela who was recently awarded the Engaged Scholar Graduate Student Award from the JHU Center for Social Concern. Suhas works with PI Prof. Tim Weihs (JHU) in the Metals CMRG.
The Engaged Scholar Graduate Student Award is given to a Homewood-affiliated graduate student whose dedication to community engagement, through teaching, community-based program development, and/or research has enriched the undergraduate student experience and established meaningful community partnerships.
Suhas was nominated for this award by people from different departments across campus including three faculty from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering: Prof. Tim Weihs, Prof. Evan Ma and Prof. Patricia McGuiggan.
“I am very grateful for the wonderful support from my adviser (Prof. Tim Weihs) as well other faculty in the department. The ability to inspire, articulate complex scientific concepts and engage young minds with open questions provides me a great opportunity for learning and appreciating science from different perspectives. Their encouragement towards teaching and mentoring undergraduate students at Hopkins as benefitted me immensely.”
