Jessica Krogstad was a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Kevin Hemker at Johns Hopkins University (2012 -2014). She is currently Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory at UIUC.

Elena Caraba graduated with her Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2014. Her advisors were Prof. M. Heath (Computer Science) and Prof. Philippe Geubelle (Aerospace Engineering). Thesis: “Computational Modeling and Simulation of Composite Materials Based on Tomographic Images“.

Ariel Wilhelmsen completed her Masters in May 2015. Her advisor was Prof. Nancy Sottos and she was a member of the Sottos Group. Thesis: “Characterization of Local Strain Fields in Composites Under Transverse Loading“.

Amanda Jones a member of Prof. Nancy Sottos’s group, completed her PhD in May 2015. Thesis: “Solvent-based self-healing approaches for fiber-reinforced composites”. She is currently a postdoctoral scholar.

Kirubel Teferra, a post doctoral researcher with Prof. Lori Graham-Brady’s group from 2012, joined the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in September 2015. He is a Mechanical Engineer and currently located in Washington, DC. Congratulations!

Masoud Safdari, a post-doctoral fellow working with Prof. Philippe Geubelle in University of Illinois from February 2013, is now a research scientist at Illinois Rocstar since January 2016. Illinois Rocstar, a company head quartered in Champaign IL, does simulation science; builds the tools, the infrastructures, and the interfaces to help industry gain a return on their investment for using modelling & simulation to improve their processes and products. We thank him for his contributions as a member of CEIMM and wish him all the best!

Michael Rossol, a post-doctoral fellow who joined Prof. Nancy Sottos’s group in August 2015, is now a Materials and Data Scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado. We thank him for his contributions as a member of CEIMM and wish him all the best!

Amin Aramoon, an active member of CEIMM and Prof. El-Awady’s graduate student, successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled, ‘A Multiscale Computational Framework to Predict Deformation and Failure in Polymer Matrix Composites’ on October 19, 2016. He is currently the lead software developer/designer for the newly created Software Hub (SofHub), which is within Johns Hopkins-Center for Integrated Structure Materials Modeling and Simulations (JHU-CISMMS).

Maryam Shakiba, a post-doctoral fellow who joined Prof. Philippe Geubelle’s group at UIUC in February 2016, is now a faculty member at the Charles E. Via Jr. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech, VA. As an Assistant Professor under the Program Area of Structural Engineering and Materials, Dr. Shakiba’s main areas of interests are multi-physics modeling and characterization of materials, multi-scale simulation and computational mechanics, and sustainability analysis of infrastructure. We wish her all the best in her new role at Virginia Tech.

Scott Zacek, joined Prof. Philippe Geubelle’s group in January 2015 and completed his Masters degree in January 2017. The title of his thesis is, ‘Exploring the Link between Microstructure Statistics and Transverse Ply Fracture in Carbon/Epoxy Composites’. Scott is now a Simulation Engineer within the Engineering Rotational Development Program in the Innovation and Technology Development Division of Caterpillar Inc. His current work will focus primarily on structural finite element modeling. Congratulations and we wish you all the best!