Niezgoda receives DARPA Young Faculty Award
Assistant Professor Stephen Niezgoda recently received a prestiguous Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for his project titled "Computational Design Tools for Quantifying Uncertainty Due to Material Variability."
His project is focused on developing the mathematics to properly quantify materials variability so that product designers and manufacturers can properly account for it through rational assignment of safety factors without the need to build and test multiple prototypes.
"Incorporating new materials or manufacturing processes into industries which require a high-margin of safety such as aerospace, automotive, and power generation is currently done through a 'build, test and break' methodology," Niezgoda said. "The current process takes too long, is energy inefficient, and produces fewer parts per pound of raw material used."
According to Niezgoda, industry and government aim to disrupt this process cycle by leveraging integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) to create a computational manufacturing simulator to augment the experimentation and drive down the number of tests required to establish confidence in the manufacturing process.
In addition to funding, mentoring from DARPA managers and networking opportunities, the Young Faculty Award program provides opportunities for recipients to go on military site visits.
An assistant professor in both Materials Science and Engineering and Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Niezgoda also is the director of Ohio State's Mesoscale Mechanics and Microstructures Laboratory.
