Recent Materials Science and Engineering doctoral graduate, Sachin Muley, was awarded the Wisconsin Initiative for Science Literacy (WISL) Award for Communicating PhD Research to the Public. His thesis chapter, “Structure-property correlations in metallic glass and amorphous carbon films,” focuses on one of three themes of his PhD thesis, metallic glasses. Metallic glasses have many important uses today and in the near future as strong smart phone bodies, and as tough, slick coatings.
Muley’s research was funded by the Wisconsin Materials Research Science and Education Center (MRSEC) in Dr. Paul Voyes’ lab since 2017 (DMR 1720415). As part of Muley’s PhD work, he developed new processes for creating hard metallic glasses.
“The result is thin layers of hard metallic glass – about 100 times thinner than a hair – with the atoms packed together very tightly. These hard, heat stable glasses are scientifically interesting because they may find uses as hard coatings in biomedical devices like scalpels, needles, and implants,” wrote Muley in his chapter.
The WISL Award for Communicating PhD Research to the Public is given annually to doctoral candidates who submit a PhD thesis chapter that describes their research to non-science audiences. This means avoiding discipline-specific terms that someone without scientific training wouldn’t understand, as well as directly conveying the significance of the research.