Undercooled: A Materials Education Podcast

Steve and Tim talk with some of our undergraduate students to hear their opinions and stories about their undergraduate experience. They talk with Eli Richey, Bella Calfas, and Olivia Schroder, who are officers of the Michigan Materials Society at the University of Michigan. You can find the YouTube version of the podcast here: https://youtu.be/_SnDu-mrZ4c Our YouTube channel can be found here: ht...

Tim and Steve talk with Professor Franklin Hobbs from University of Wisconsin's Materials Science and Engineering Department.  Franklin is a teaching professor with an uncanny resemblance to Tim Chambers at UM.  We talk about his career, the lab courses he developed at Wisconsin, and his really interesting course for non-materials and non-STEM majors. Here are some interesting tidbits and links re...

Tim and Steve talk to Dr. Jason Carroll about his career at Eaton and his views for success as a Materials Scientist and Engineer. You can find the YouTube version of the podcast here: https://youtu.be/kM_T-Pc3EpU Our YouTube channel can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/@Undercooled. Materials If you want to add a voice comment on this or any other of our podcasts, suggest a guest, or volunte...

Steve talks with Dave Eaglesham, the CTO of Electric Hydrogen, at a lobster co-op in Bath Maine as well as in a brew pub in Brunswick Maine.  They talk about Dave's career as a faculty member at U. Liverpool in Materials Science and Engineering, his time at Bell Labs, his stint at Lawrence Livermore labs as the Chief Technologist for the Materials Division, his time at Applied Materials and how he...

Steve and Tim talked with Ron Gibala.  Ron was the chair of MS&E at UM and was also the interim dean.  We talked about his career and how he used fundamental materials science to earn quite a bit of money consulting.  He gave us two great examples.  One where knowledge of TTT diagrams and a bit of common sense helped him solve a problem for a metals fabricator of spring clips.  The second was...

Tim and Steve give a recap of the North American Materials Education Symposium that was held July 29-31, 2026 at the University of Victoria in Canada.  We discuss some of our favo(u)rite talks and what made them so interesting and informative.  We also have a travel saga of the journey trying to get home through many cancelled flights!  Finally, we have some testimonials from NAMES attendees about...

Tim and Steve talk about what we learned from Season 3 and what to expect from Season 4. You can find the YouTube version of the podcast here: https://youtu.be/VV4r3j9sNuo Our YouTube channel can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/@Undercooled. Materials If you want to add a voice comment on this or any other of our podcasts, suggest a guest, or volunteer to be a guest, please visit our website...

Steve and Tim talk with Anil Sachdev, a UM Adjunct Professor in Materials Science and Engineering.  They talk about Anil's education at MIT, his career at General Motors, and some of the remarkable impacts he made with alloy and process design for GM products. He describes his lifelong journey of controlling microstructure to improve products.   He also talks at length about his work with in-situ...

Steve and Tim talked with Jacob Kelter, the Executive Director of the NetLogo Center at Northwestern University, about how he is using atomistic simulations of fundamental materials processes and concepts to build an interactive digital textbook for an introductory materials science and engineering course. His book is ready for adoption and he would love to help any faculty member out there use it...

Tim and Steve talked with Professor Reg Rogers from University of Missouri in the Chemical and Biomedical Engineering department about his mentoring of students, his background, and the recent development of a new Masters program.  Reg is a dedicated teacher and mentor, especially to students who face significant challenges in their college careers.  Reg told us many inspiring stories about how he...

Tim and Steve talk with Jerry Bourne from Colorado School of Mines about his bladesmithing class in the Materials and Metallurgy department at Colorado School of Mines, and the award-winning TMS Bladesmithing Competition team from Mines.  We discuss the importance of applied knowledge for motivating students to develop theoretical knowledge, and the challenges and rewards of delivering a high-enro...

Steve and Tim talk with Professor Liz Holm about teaching thermodynamics, life as a department chair, and the future of Materials Science and Engineering. The YouTube video can be found here: https://youtu.be/6ZHt4haqgJg Our YouTube channel can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/@Undercooled. Materials This episode is sponsored by the TMS Foundation (https://www.tms.org/TMSFoundation/TMSFoundat...

Tim and Steve talk with Dr. Loulou Batta about her experiences as a grad student and her thoughts about her future now that she is getting her PhD in the week we filmed this podcast.  We discuss topics from sustainable fiber composites to helping new graduate students acclimate to a new living environment to the value (or lack thereof?) of coursework in a PhD program. The YouTube video can be foun...

Tim and Steve talk with Professor Alan Taub, the director of the University of Michigan EV Center and former Vice President of General Motors, director of global R&D for GM for 20 years. Bio: Alan Taub joined the faculty of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan in the Fall of 2012. In this role, Taub is conducting research in advanced materials and processing.  He fou...

Steve and Tim talk with Professor Ashwin Shahani about his role as undergraduate chair, how he approaches teaching kinetics with ChatGPT and vibe coding, as well as his research in solidification science.  Professor Shahani also talks about how he is incorporating his work with Hydro, an Al production company, to help them upcycle post-consumer scrap Al into high-quality products.  Short Bio: Shah...

Tim and Steve caught up with Dr. Avi Bregman at the TMS meeting.  Avi is at the Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins University. He is the section supervisor for Materials Discovery there.  He talked about his journey to Materials Science and his career path after getting his PhD.  He talked about the work he is currently doing.  Avi also told us about his company that helps smaller universities g...

Steve and Tim talk about how to use stories of successful sustainability projects in the curriculum of second to fourth year engineering courses.  They explain how they will use several of the future podcasts to collect these stories.  They also talk about how these stories may end up framing an open source "textbook" for introductory materials science and engineering and complement higher level c...

Steve and Tim talk with Dr. Joel McDonald, the Technical Director for Mobility products at Dow Chemical company.  Joel was Steve's PhD student and an Applied Physics graduate at U. Michigan.  He talks about how he first worked at Sandia National Labs before transitioning to Dow Corning, and later Dow.  He explains how he was able to perform well in a chemical company even though his background was...

Steve and Tim talk to Prof. Patrick Shamberger from the MS&E department at Texas A&M.  He tells us the story of how he helped build a new materials department and create a new curriculum for their students.  He also talks about his research in phase change materials and how they may be one of the keys to a sustainable energy future. You can learn more about Patrick here:   https://engineer...

Tim and Steve talked with Dr. Paul Krajewski, the Director of Materials and Manufacturing Research at the General Motors Global Research and Development Center, about sustainability at GM, his work, what he looks for in hiring, and much more.  He even talks to us about his STEAM interests and the books he has written for kids. BIO Dr. Paul E. Krajewski is the Director of Materials and Manufacturin...

Steve and Tim talk with Professor Rob Beck at the University of Michigan.  Rob and Steve teach a joint course combining MSE with Archaeology & Anthropology to teach materials engineering students about the humanities and to teach humanities students about engineering.  The course is called "Making Things: Three Million Years of Materials and Culture".  It is based on work that Kevin Jones (see...

Tim and Steve interview Dr. Tricia Nguyen about her career in textiles that evolved from her degrees in Materials Science & Engineering.  She currently owns and operates a historical embroidery company, Thistle Threads: https://thistle-threads.myshopify.com/pages/about-us . If you're interested in learning more, you can even take classes in historical needlework projects at her online universi...

Steve and Tim talked with Professor Ivan Baiges from University of Puerto Rico - Mayaguez about the new undergraduate program he and his team developed called Sustainability Engineering.  He described the need for such a program, especially in Puerto Rico, as well as how he went about assembling a team of faculty to do the hard work of creating new courses, convincing administrators, and making it...

Professor David Srolovitz has made many important contributions to materials science and engineering during his career.  He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and will be receiving the Hume-Rothery award at TMS next year.  He was visiting Michigan to present the Larry Van Vlack lecture and we were honored by his presence.  Dave and Steve were grad students together at U. PA many ye...

Steve and Tim talked with Professor John Allison about Integrated Computational Manufacturing Engineering (ICME) and his PRISMS center.  John talked about how creating the Virtual Aluminum Casting program at Ford led to the ability to predict properties of the as cast aluminum engine blocks to the point where they were perfect the first time.  This vastly improved the time to develop new products...