Krause Group: Interfacial Engineering for Extreme Environments

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The Krause Group explores microstructure evolution, grain boundary structure-property relationships, and crystal nucleation and growth in ceramics. Our goal is to tune material properties with microstructural design via powder processing. To accomplish this goal, we specialize in microstructural characterization with electron and x-ray microscopy techniques. Learn more about who we are and our research projects.

Lab News

Fall 2023 + Spring 2024

Daniel DeLellis and Mandie Krause

Student Milestones:

Congratulations to Daniel DeLellis for successfully defending his thesis in April 2024! He is starting a postiion at NASA this summer.

Congratulations to Yi Wang for successfully passing his RPE in fall of 2023!

Welcome to Mehmet Can Dursun and Hailey Hall!

Presentations:

Dr. Krause spoke at University of Virginia and Penn State in fall of 2023. Daniel DeLellis gave talks at MS&T '23 and ICACC 2024 and Vivekanand Muralikrishnan gave a talk at TMS 2024.

Publications:

Congratulations to Daniel DeLellis for publishing a first-author paper in Scripta Materialia. Dr. Krause had several publications with collaborators at University of Florida in Computational Materials Science, Materials & Design and Tomography of Materials & Structures, and published with Vivekanand Muralikrishnan and other collaborators in Acta Materialia.

Educational Activities:

Dr. Krause did several lectures and a slip casting activity with students at Pittsburgh CAPA 6-12 in a visual arts class. The students learned about the science of pottery and glaze and learned the similarities between artistic design and scientific exploration.

Dr. Krause introduced creative skill building into Microstructure & Properties I, in which students had to practice brainstorming and design experiments to solve open-ended engineering problems.

Summer 2023

Krause group members in PNC Park at Pirates baseball game

Student Milestones

Congratulations to Dr. Bryan Conry for successfully defending his thesis in July! He is moving on to a position at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Congratulations to Vivek Muralikrishnan and Daniel DeLellis for passing their overviews this August.

Conference Presentations

Dr. Bryan Conry, Daniel, DeLellis, Vivekanand Muralikrishnan, and Dr. Krause gave talks the Rex&GG conference in Copenhagen Denmark. Dr. Krause also presented at the workshop on "Intersection of Materials Science and Machine Learning" hosted by the Air Force Research Lab.

Publications

Dr. Bryan Conry published his third first-author paper. This paper includes co-authors Molly Kole and W. Ryan Burnett, who worked on this project as undergraduates at University of Florida.

Educational Activities

Dr. Krause taught 14 5th-8th graders at the Gelfand Center's GO Summer Class on "Engineering Unbreakable Ceramics." These students got to learn about the properties and uses for ceramics in their life. They also got to make and break(!) their own composites to learn strategies used to improve the toughness of ceramics. 

Spring 2023

Presentations

Krause group was well represented at the American Ceramic Society conferences in January. Bryan Conry gave an invited talk at the International Conference and Exposition on Advanced Ceramics and Composites (ICACC). Daniel DeLellis presented his first poster at a professional conference at ICACC and was a co-author on another abstract. Dr. Krause chaired the Electronic Materials and Applications (EMA) Conference, where Vivek Muralikrishnan presented his poster. 

Dr. Krause and 4 students standing in front of Advanced Photon Lab
National Lab Trips
The group collected a lot of data this semester, requiring two trips to national labs. Vivek Muralikrishnan, Yi Wang, Hao Zhu and Dr. Krause (accompanied by Dr. Bob Suter and Zipeng Xu) traveled to APS (Advanced Photon Source) at Argonne National Lab to complete grain growth studies using high energy x-ray diffraction microscopy in March. Bryan Conry, Daniel DeLellis, and Dr. Krause conducted slip casting and grain growth experiments with collaborator Dr. Mike Kesler at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in April.

Educational Activities
Dr. Krause participated in the Society of Women Engineer's Middle School Day. She introduced materials science to middle school girls, who got to make their own slime!
Dr. Krause gave a seminar on how to write strong scientific hypotheses to graduate students in MSE at the CMU professional development series. 

Awards and Recognitions
Dr. Krause was awarded the Wimmer Faculty Fellowship to introduce creativity into Microstructure & Properties I for juniors in MSE.
She was also recognized by the American Ceramic Society Bulletin for the Volunteer Spotlight

Xradia machine closed and open

X-ray Xradia Context with LabDCT installed
The new X-ray Xradia Context with LabDCT was installed in the Materials Characterization Facility (MCF) in January. The Krause Group is looking forward to using this tool for its current projects.

Fall 2022

Krause Group members pose with decorated gingerbread houses at holiday gathering

Krause Lab Moves to CMU
In August 2022, the Krause lab moved from Gainesville, FL to Carnegie Mellon University. We are enjoying exploring Pittsburgh.

New Group Members
Welcome to Yi Wang and Hao Zhu!

Publications
We had a productive publication list this fall. Congratulations to Amanda Velázquez Plaza and Vivek Muralikrishnan, who each published their first first-author papers in the group, as well as Bryan Conry for his second first-author paper. Dr. Krause also published with her new CMU colleagues in the invited Annual Review.

American Ceramic Society Awards

Congratulations to Bryan Conry and Vivek Muralikrishnan for winning the GEMS Sapphire Awards at this year’s Materials Science & Technology Conference.

Presentations
Dr. Krause gave invited talks at Materials Science & Technology Conference (MS&T) and Materials Research Society (MRS) Fall Meeting. She also gave a seminar at University of Pennsylvania.

Faculty

Mandie Krause

Amanda Krause

Assistant Professor

Before joining the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Carnegie Mellon University in 2022, she was an assistant professor of MSE at the University of Florida (2019-2022). She received her B.S. and M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Virginia Tech, and her Ph.D. in Materials Science from Brown University. From 2016-2018, she was a lecturer and post-doctoral research associate at Lehigh University. Her research focus is engineering grain boundaries and interfaces for improving the mechanical performance, degradation response, and thermal properties of ceramics used in extreme environments. She is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award (2022).

Office
Wean 4319
Phone
412-268-8292
Email
krause@cmu.edu
Google Scholar
Amanda Krause

Research team

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Mehmet Can Dursun

Doctorate

Research interests
Determining the relationship between grain boundary structure and mobility to elucidate mechanisms responsible for irregular grain growth.
Email
mehmetcd@andrew.cmu.edu
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Hailey Hall

Doctorate

Research interests
Evaluating the significance of grain boundary character on microstructure evolution by comparing grain growth in textured and untextured materials using 3D XRD techniques.
Email
hehall@andrew.cmu.edu
Vivekanand Muralikrishnan

Vivekanand Muralikrishnan

Doctorate

Research interests
Understanding how history of the microstructure influences the unusual grain growth behavior in SrTiO3 via 3D EBSD and 3D XRD techniques.
Email
vmuralik@andrew.cmu.edu
Yi Wang

Yi Wang

Doctorate

Research interests
Investigating GB motion mechanism and its temperature dependency by HEDM
Email
yiw4@andrew.cmu.edu

Graduated students

  • Dr. Daniel DeLellis, PhD (2024). Dissertation: The Role of Microstructural Defects in Grain Growth
  • Hao Zhu, Masters (2024), Materials Science and Engineering
  • Dr. Bryan Conry, PhD (2023). Dissertation: "Anisotropic Grain Boundary Networks and Their Role in Abnormal Grain Growth"

Research Projects

Two students using machine in lab

Student Resources

Safety: https://www.cmu.edu/ehs

Dream3D: https://www.dream3d.io

Paraview: https://www.paraview.org

Use better colormaps: http://bids.github.io/colormap

Arizona Mineralogist Structural Database: http://rruff.geo.arizona.edu/AMS/amcsd.php

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Courses

Course Course Name Location Units Semester Offered
27-301 Microstructure and Properties I Pittsburgh 9 Fall

Media mentions

CMU Engineering

Krause and Abbott receive NSF CAREER Awards

CMU College of Engineering’s Krause and Abbott receive NSF CAREER Awards for their research in materials science and biomedical engineering.

Krause and Wang named Wimmer Faculty Fellows

CEE’s Jerry Wang and MSE’s Mandie Krause have been named Wimmer Faculty Fellows at the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation.

Materials Science and Engineering

Krause leans into creativity with ceramics

Assistant Professor Mandie Krause is a ceramicist passionate about merging engineering and art. She joined CMU this fall.