Current Graduate Researchers, Undergraduate Researchers, and Visiting Scientists
Dr. Charles Chemale Yurgel
Postdoctoral Associate
Dr. Yurgel’s area of research focuses on the evaluation of the hot forging process with steel materials to enable new developments for industry. His work involves assessing the involved material and its processing throughout the forging life cycle: from the raw material, to heating, upsetting, press and hammer, dies, finishing materials, to the final product.
Dr. John Plumeri
Research Scientist
Dr. Plumeri’s areas of research include numerical modeling of metal alloys and metal forming processes, especially lightweight alloys.
Dr. Nijenthan Rajendran
Postdoctoral Researcher
Dr. Rajendran’s research area is material forming–mostly specializing in material flow analysis of forming processes such as extrusion, forging, rolling
and more, studied through numerical process simulation and physical material modeling.
Trevor Verdonik
PhD Candidate, Materials Science & Engineering
Trevor’s primary research is in metal additive manufacturing with a focus on tooling repair and improvement through AM techniques; his research involves the use of a variety of equipment and analysis tools: heat treatment furnaces, hot wear testing, micro hardness testers, metallography, LOM, and SEM.
Michael Pires
PhD Candidate, Materials Science & Engineering
Michael’s research focuses mostly on additive manufacturing (or physical metallurgy). His work involves the printing of samples using different alloyed powders and characterizing their microstructure and performance.
Mahsa Navidirad
PhD Candidate, Materials Science & Engineering
Mahsa’s research focuses on roll bonding of aluminum alloys, specifically, finding optimized conditions for the solid state recycling of aluminum alloys.
Chia-chun Chao
Graduate Researcher, Materials Science & Engineering
Chia-chun’s research involves micro-additive manufactured 316 stainless steel components produced by binder jet and direct metal laser sintering.
Cole Kuehmann
Undergraduate Researcher, Materials Science & Engineering
Cole’s research interests are in numerical modeling of precipitation to micro structural development and the modeling of mechanical properties. His previous research has been on cast aluminum alloy development, along with analysis of selective laser melted tungsten heavy alloy utilizing Atomic Force Microscopy.
Kazuki Watanabe
Undergraduate Researcher, Materials Science & Engineering
Kazuki is currently working on a collaborative research project led by Mahsa, where they will be conducting compression tests on 3d printed aluminum alloys of 4xxx and 6xxx series, and conducting experiments under varying conditions to understand the properties of the material further.
Nicholas Rockwell
Visiting Research Scientist
Nick’s work focuses on statistical analysis of researcher results, web development, and web application development for The Loewy Institute.
Conner Larocque
Undergraduate Researcher
Conner is an undergraduate researcher with The Loewy Institute; his research interests are in analyzing the deformation, cyclic loading, and other additional properties of metal additive flextures and compliant mechanisms.
Gökalp Çetin
PhD Candidate, Mechanical Engineering
Gökalp is a PhD Candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Lehigh who is conducting research as a member of The Loewy Institute. Previously, Gökalp’s academic work and research focused on mechatronics with an emphasis on Additive Manufacturing (AM); his research interests include powder metallurgy and various manufacturing methods. Currently, Gökalp is researching forging and powder metal 3d printing applied to forging tools.