HIGHLIGHTS ADVANCED MATERIALS & PROCESSES | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 42 on planning new work or discussing new data with various stakeholders. I also make time for OPEN, our company’s LGBTQ+ employee resource group, which I’ve served on since 2020. What is your engineering background? I got my bachelor’s degree in materials engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and continued on to get my Ph.D. at RPI under Dr. Robert Hull and the late Dr. David Duquette. My focus was understanding localized corrosion initiation at the nanoscale using a flowing liquid cell for the transmission electron microscope. I also spent a semester with Dr. Frances Ross at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center and followed on to become her postdoc after I graduated and she’d moved to MIT. I was a postdoc until my security clearance came through to start my current position at NNL. What attracted you to engineering? My first academic passion was chemistry. My high school teacher, Dr. Spillane, had an incredible way of making “how stuff works” on a molecular level very intuitive. I figured when I got to college I’d just “go find applied chemistry” and ended up in materials engineering! I can also thank a very passionate pitch from Prof. Hull at RPI to the undeclared engineering students in freshman year—I didn’t know materials science existed or how perfect it fit my own passions before then. Best career advice, given or received: Engage in “constructive stupidity.” Working in research means being aware of all that you do not know or are not certain of yet. Sometimes that’s answers no one has, and sometimes that’s just what you need to shove your nose in the literature to find. Either way that should guide how you ask and answer your own questions and build our science. Tell us about your involvement with ASM. I got involved with ASM as an undergraduate and remained a member in graduate school through RPI’s Material Advantage chapter. The local ASM professional chapter (Eastern NY) hosted a fabulous poster and micrograph contest and it was my favorite event every year. It felt like the only place during my studies that I was exposed to the industry our studies would support, and when I eventually stuck around to work for local industry it was a huge boost to have professional relationships with several coworkers at the start. Last podcast listened to? The “What Makes Lead So Poisonous?” episode of the Stuff You Should Know podcast. Favorite quote? “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” – Maya Angelou Do you know someone who should be featured in an upcoming Face of Materials Engineering profile? Contact Vicki Burt at vicki.burt@asminternational.org. CHAPTERS IN THE NEWS CHAPTERS IN THE NEWS Nagpur Welcomes Manjooran Dr. Navin Manjooran, FASM, visited Nagpur, India, on September 19-30, 2023, for activities related to ASM International and the Material Advantage student chapter affiliated with ASM’s Pune Chapter. Manjooran is currently senior vice president of ASM and chairman of Solve Global USA. On the first day, Manjooran visited Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management and discussed materials science trends with faculty and students. The second day included a visit with the Material Advantage chapter at Cummins College of Engineering for Women. Students were honored on September 30 at the Cummins College of Engineering for Women. Udayan Pathak, FASM, Pune Chapter chair (le ), presents a plaque to Navin Manjooran (center) in appreciation for his keynote at the 1st International Conference on Recent Advances in Science Engineering and Technology.
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