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Prof. Wei Xiong started his sabbatical at MIT as a visiting scholar

  • Date: 2025-09-02

Prof. Wei Xiong began his sabbatical in September as a visiting scholar at MIT, working with Prof. Greg Olson, his former postdoctoral advisor. Although promoted to Associate Professor three years ago, Prof. Xiong continued his daily research and laboratory activities before taking this sabbatical. This reunion with Prof. Olson is expected to foster productive new research directions. Stay tuned for upcoming developments.

The PMMD Lab Website Migration

  • Date: 2025-08-14

We have accomplished most of the lab website migration from a html system to a MkDocs system. In the future, the website updates will become much easier.

Batuhan Tak and Melih Ustalar will be start their Ph.D. studies this fall semester

  • Date: 2025-08-10

Welcome to Pittsburgh, Batuhan Tak and Melih Ustalar! We're thrilled to have you both join us on your Ph.D. journeys. The entire community is looking forward to seeing the great things you'll accomplish.

Dr. Wei Xiong will deliver four invited lectures at MRS2025 & TMS2026 and a Keynote at NIST-AM benchmark workshop

  • Date: 2025-08-06

Dr. Wei Xiong gets invition from conferences organizers from MRS2025 and TMS2026 to give four invited talks. In addition, he will deliver a keynote presentation at the NIST-AM benchmark workshop.

PMMD Lab member, Dr. Soumya Sridar received an offer to start her career at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India

  • Date: 2024-11-01

Dr. Soumya Sridar has just received an offer and will start her new position as an assistant professor at IIT Kanpur, a top institution in India. She will establish a research lab in materials design and continue her work in computational thermodynamics. We wish her the best of luck and look forward to receiving more good news from her.

PMMD Lab at MS&T 2024

  • Date: 2024-10-06

The Physical Metallurgy and Materials Design Laboratory (PMMD Lab) is proud to announce that our team will be presenting ten talks, including one invited presentation, at the upcoming MS&T 2024 conference in Pittsburgh from tomorrow Oct 7 to 9. Representing a diverse range of countries (7 nations), our lab members will be sharing their latest research on cutting-edge topics such as: Additive Manufacturing, Calphad-based ICME Modeling, Database Development, and Machine Learning. Our research systems include Alloys, Ceramics, and Molten Salts. We invite you to join us at our presentations to learn more about our exciting work and discover how our research is shaping the future of materials science.

Celebrating Excellence: Noah Sargent’s Journey from PhD to Blue Origin

  • Date: 2023-09-01

The Physical Metallurgy and Materials Design (PMMD) Laboratory celebrates the remarkable journey of Noah Sargent, a recent PhD graduate from Dr. Wei Xiong’s research lab. In just four years, Noah defended his thesis on additive manufacturing of functionally graded alloys, supported by the prestigious NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Fellowship. His work, resulting in six peer-reviewed journal publications, involved collaborations with NASA departments and national labs like ORNL. Noah’s academic excellence has led to an immediate transition into industry, securing a position as a Materials Engineer at Blue Origin. This success story highlights the real-world impact of research at PMMD Lab and the exciting career paths available after PhD studies at PMMD Lab. Noah’s achievements inspire current and future students, showcasing the bridge between cutting-edge academic research and space technology innovation.

Our PMMD Lab published two papers in both Nature Communications and Science Advances

  • Date: 2022-12-01

It is exciting to know that the PMMD lab has published two papers in top level academic journals. Both are communication letter papers. The one on Science Advances is about developing TRIP/TWIP high-performance high-entropy alloy using high-throughput computation by collaborating with IIT Chicago. The other one on Nature Communications is about a new technique developed for the 3D printing of high-entropy alloys by collaborating with the University of Maryland.

Press:

Our lab members return back to the lab after internship at Thermo-Calc, NASA-JPL, and Apple Inc.

  • Date: 2022-08-16

Mr. Xin Wang was doing an internship at Apple Inc. on ICME. After 6-month hardworking, he got back in the last weekend and start working in the lab today. He will continue his thesis study on machine learning enhanced materials design for additive manufacturing. Meanwhile, he will start working with new lab members to help them learn faster in materials design and ICME. In addition, another two members, Noah Sargent will also travel back to Pitt after his internship at NASA JPL at the end of Aug, and Liangyan Hao will return back to the lab after an internship at Thermo-Calc software company. Both Noah and Liangyan Hao have had productive internship research studies. The experience will help them to perform better in their thesis research.

Joint group picnic in Mingo Creek County Park

  • Date: 2022-08-07

Prof. Xiayun Zhao organized a joint group party with some PMMD lab members. One of the purposes is to celebrate the success of Dr. Chaitanya Krishna P Vallabh in finding a faculty position at the Stevens Institute of Technology. Dr. Vallabh is a postdoc with Prof. Zhao, and he has just published a joint paper with Dr. Soumya Sridar and Dr. Xiong about in situ monitoring of the laser powder bed fusion process.

Prof. Xiong participated project meeting at Air Force Research Laboratory

  • Date: 2022-08-04

Dr. Xiong participated in a kick-off meeting at the Air Force Research Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio. The project is about uncertainty quantification of the manufacturing for ZrB2, which is vital for the hypersonic composite. The project will try to understand the contamination and its influence on ZrB2 after different processing steps. This is a research study through collaboration with UC Davis (leading institution) and Missouri Science & Technology.

Joint group BBQ party in Moraine State Park

  • Date: 2022-07-16

Three research groups (To, Xiong, Zhao) had a joint party in the Moraine State Park on Sat, July 16. We had a wonderful weekend day enjoying the sunshine and a little storm. Everyone enjoyed the BBQ with different dishes from different countries. The international teams finally get a good chance to union together after research in Additive Manufacturing. There are many newly joined group members in this team. This is the first time everyone sees each other in person after a 3-year battle with COVID. In addition, we are celebrating Dr. Xiong’s promotion as well! He has finally received the promotion letter from the Office of Provost! He will start as an associate professor in Sept. 2022. Congratulations!

Shady Side Academy high-school internship visiting day

  • Date: 2022-07-14

Since 2018, every year, the PMMD Lab will host 1–2 high-school student interns from the Shady Side Academy to learn advanced manufacturing of high-performance materials. They will study together with our graduates and postdocs under the supervision of Dr. Wei Xiong. Today, Dr. Jill Schumacher, the teacher in Shady Side of our two interns, Maxwell Wickland and Carson Curley, visited our lab to understand the topics that both interns are learning. She visited our additive manufacturing lab as well as our materials characterization facilities. Maxwell is working on the Haynes 282 alloy prepared by wire-arc additive manufacturing, while Carson is studying additive manufacturing of high-entropy alloys.

Congratulations to Dr. Soumya Sridar on promotion becoming Research Assistant Professor

  • Date: 2022-07-01

Congratulations to Dr. Soumya Sridar on the promotion of becoming a Research Assistant Professor at the PMMD Lab. Prof. Sridar joined the lab in 2019 as a postdoc research associate. During the past three years, she has accomplished a number of projects with a successful track record of publication in additive manufacturing, which is entirely new to her since her Ph.D. thesis at the IIT Madras was about thermodynamic modeling. We are excited to have Dr. Sridar continue with us for excellence in materials and manufacturing design. Expect More Victory!

PMMD lab members joined CALPHAD conference in Stockholm, Sweden

  • Date: 2022-06-12

PMMD lab members, Ms. Liangyan Hao, Mr. Noah Sargent, and Dr. Wei Xiong joined the CALPAHD XLIX conference in Stockholm from May 22 to 27. After the conference, Liangyan and Wei were invited to join the 3rd Gen lattice stability workshop held at KTH the next week. It is extremely exciting to see all of the CALPHAD friends after several years back to the on-site meeting. It is worth mentioning that Dr. Xiong will be co-organizing the next CALPHAD meeting at M.I.T. in Boston for the 50th anniversary (Jul. 30–Aug. 4).

PMMD lab members joined MOST-AM workshop and presented research in metals 3D printing

  • Date: 2022-05-05

PMMD lab members Mr. Noah Sargent, Dr. Soumya Sridar, and Dr. Wei Xiong joined the MOST-AM Consortium (Modeling & Optimization Simulation Tools for Additive Manufacturing) workshop and interacted with all MOST-AM friends today in the University Club at Pitt. Noah presented his new observations in directed energy deposition of functionally graded steels. Dr. Soumya Sridar showed her achievements in the past ONR AMANE project regarding additive manufacturing of high-strength low-alloy steels. It is an exciting in-person workshop with many friends. MOST-AM members also had a lab tour and visited the ANSYS additive manufacturing lab, which houses five 3D printers, including a new one from Gefertec wire-feed additive manufacturing machine. We look forward to the next workshop this fall.

Farewell party for Dr. Yunhao Zhao

  • Date: 2022-04-30

Yunhao came for his PhD commencement ceremony this week. He is the first Ph.D. of the PMMD lab; we enjoyed the time with him. Most of the lab members joined this party. And we had a fun day in Raccoon Creek State Park. We will miss you, Yunhao! And we trust you will be excellent in your future career!

Yunhao Zhao revisited Pitt for PhD commencement ceremony

  • Date: 2022-04-29

Dr. Yunhao Zhao came and revisited Pitt for his PhD commencement ceremony on April 29. He is the first Ph.D. of the PMMD lab. Yunhao worked on additive manufacturing design of Inconel 718 alloy for his thesis. Before graduation, he already received an offer from Cummins Inc., which is an American multinational corporation for power generation products. Yunhao has published more than 10 academic papers, with several important student awards including Department Research Assistant Award. We will miss you, Yunhao! And we trust you will be excellent in your future career!

Congratulations to our undergraduate researcher Lauren Wewer on winning the best poster award during the ASM Young Members Night Poster Competition

  • Date: 2022-04-14

We are very proud of our undergraduate researcher, Lauren Wewer, who just received the best poster award during the American Society for Metals (ASM) Young Members Night Poster Competition. Lauren worked with us for one year during her senior study after taking Dr. Xiong’s thermodynamic course. She performed the MASCRO summer research intern on graded alloy additive manufacturing. During the ASM Young Members Night, she presented her research results generated from the MASCRO summer research internship. The poster was under blind judging. Lauren’s poster: “Alloy Design by Additive Manufacturing for Power Plants with High Energy Efficiency,” outcompeted other students from both Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University in the undergraduate category. Lauren will continue her graduate study in our department for functional materials, and we are sure that she will keep up the good work during her graduate research.

Undergraduate researcher Daozheng Li gave his very first conference presentation at TMS 2022

  • Date: 2022-03-03

Mr. Daozheng Li and Prof. Wei Xiong attended the TMS conference from Feb 27 to March 3, Anaheim, California. Mr. Daozheng gave his first academic presentation on the effort printing metal composite of 316L and 718. This is the work that he performed using his spare time during his junior year undergraduate study. Impressive! Prof. Xiong gave three talks, two are invited ones. One is about additive manufacturing alloy design, arranged as the first opening talk for the additive manufacturing symposium of the TMS conference. The second is about CALPHAD modeling of molten salt database for nuclear power plant, and the third is about the surface modification of additive manufacturing alloys.

Prof. Wei Xiong is serving on the editorial board of the CALPHAD journal

  • Date: 2022-02-03

Prof. Wei Xiong has been elected as the CALPHAD editorial board member for 3 years starting from 2022. At the same time, he serves as a Young Leader Editor for the CALPHAD journal.

Computational Tool Release: Stacking Fault Energy and CALPHAD-based Uncertainty Quantification Modeling for HSLA Steel Design

  • Date: 2021-11-26

Xin Wang and Dr. Wei Xiong have made webpage tools for stacking fault energy prediction and high-strength low-alloy steel design based on their publications (doi: 10.1080/14686996.2020.1808433 and doi: 10.1038/s41524-020-00454-9). We hope this simple tool can support materials design, including but not limited to TRIP/TWIP steels and uncertainty quantification in HSLA-steel manufacturing. - SFE prediction: https://pmmdlab.pythonanywhere.com/user/sfe - HSLA composition UQ: https://pmmdlab.pythonanywhere.com/user/hslauq

Congratulations to Dr. Wei Xiong on receiving the William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellowship

  • Date: 2021-11-02

Dr. Wei Xiong has been appointed as a William Kepler Whiteford Faculty Fellow effective Sept 1st, 2021 for four years. This appointment is in addition to Dr. Xiong’s academic appointment and recognizes outstanding productivity as a junior faculty member, including scholarship, education, external research support, research quality, leadership, and diversity.

Congratulations to Rafael on receiving the TMS International Symposium on Superalloys Scholarship

  • Date: 2021-10-19

Congratulations to Mr. Rafael Tomás Rodríguez De Vecchis on the TMS International Symposium on Superalloys Scholarship. Rafael attended MS&T 2021 in October with this scholarship, delivered a presentation on high-strength low-alloy steel design, and received wonderful feedback from industrial attendees. Xin Wang, Liangyan Hao, Yuankang Wang, and Dr. Wei Xiong also participated in MS&T in Columbus, Ohio.

Dr. Yunhao Zhao will start his career at Cummins for manufacturing and materials design

  • Date: 2021-08-28

Congratulations to Dr. Yunhao Zhao on his graduation! He will start his position at Cummins as a metallurgist to continue working on additive manufacturing and materials design. Dr. Zhao, the first PhD student at the PMMD lab (starting 2017), worked intensively on Inconel 718 design for additive manufacturing and has published more than 10 academic papers with several important student awards, including the Department Research Assistant Award. He contributed to preliminary work for funding applications and led two funded NASA projects.

Dr. Xiong is one of the AIME–TMS 150-year Anniversary Keynote Speakers

  • Date: 2021-07-31

Congratulations to Dr. Wei Xiong on his lecture contribution to the TMS 150-year anniversary. The lecture can be reviewed on the TMS website.

The PMMD Lab members receive three prestigious awards during the CALPHAD annual conference 2021

  • Date: 2021-06-24

Congratulations to Dr. Wei Xiong, Liangyan Hao, and Xin Wang on receiving three major awards during the virtual CALPHAD conference 2021 — CALPHAD Global. Dr. Wei Xiong received the inaugural CALPHAD Young Leader Award. Liangyan Hao and Dr. Wei Xiong received the APDIC Best Paper Award. Dr. Xin Wang received the Best Poster Award. “I am humbled to receive the first CALPHAD Young Leader Award and grateful to my colleagues and friends for their endless support and guidance,” said Dr. Wei Xiong.

Dr. Wei Xiong received the $526K NSF CAREER Award for research on Additive Manufacturing of Complex Concentrated Alloys

  • Date: 2021-04-28

Congratulations to Dr. Wei Xiong for the NSF CAREER Award for the project “Unraveling Fundamental Mechanisms Governing Grain Refinement in Complex Concentrated Alloys Made by Additive Manufacturing Towards Strong and Ductile Structures” (five years, $526,334). The project will invent new alloys for additive manufacturing and study mechanisms behind the strength–ductility trade-off for complex concentrated alloys (high-entropy alloys).

Yunhao Zhao receives the MEMS departmental Research Assistant Award

  • Date: 2021-04-16

Congratulations to Yunhao Zhao, who received the MEMS departmental Research Assistant Award (one of two graduate awardees), issued by the Engineering Graduate Student Organization.

Paper chosen as 2020 Editor’s Choice in Journal of Phase Equilibria and Diffusion

  • Date: 2021-02-26

Congratulations to Xin Wang, Dr. Soumya Sridar, and Dr. Wei Xiong on the 2020 Editor’s Choice article award. The paper is available as “Free Access” on Springer: - Wang, Sridar, Xiong, “Thermodynamic Investigation of New High-Strength Low-Alloy Steels with Heusler Phase Strengthening for Welding and Additive Manufacturing: High-Throughput CALPHAD Calculations and Key Experiments for Database Verification,” JPE&D 41:6 (2020) 804–818.

Dr. Wei Xiong received the Outstanding Reviewer Award 2020 of Acta Materialia

  • Date: 2021-02-18

In recognition of Dr. Wei Xiong’s excellent service as a reviewer for the Acta Journals in 2020, the editorial office selected him for an outstanding reviewer award. Congratulations!

Dr. Wei Xiong received the TMS Early Career Faculty Fellow Award

  • Date: 2021-02-11

Congratulations to Dr. Wei Xiong on the 2021 Early Career Faculty Fellow Award from TMS. Dr. Xiong presented the Special Lecture — Young Professional Tutorial Lecture — “Integrated Computational Materials Design for Alloy Additive Manufacturing.”

Dr. Wei Xiong serves as the track lead of Additive Manufacturing for the TMS Learning Pathways: Advanced Materials Manufacturing

  • Date: 2020-10-03

This three-day online program (Dec 7–9, 2020) offers concurrent short courses across machine learning, additive manufacturing, and lightweighting. Dr. Wei Xiong served as the track lead of Additive Manufacturing. Attendees could mix and match modules across tracks to create customized curricula.

Congratulations to Liangyan Hao and Noah Sargent on receiving the prestigious CALPHAD scholarship

  • Date: 2020-03-01

Both Noah and Liangyan were selected for scholarships to attend CALPHAD in Sweden (May 2020). Liangyan received the “Stiftelsen för Tillämpad Termodynamik” (STT) scholarship; Noah received the Kaufman scholarship. Both presented oral talks. Liangyan demonstrated excellence in CALPHAD and DFT; Noah produced promising graded-alloy AM data within one semester transitioning from an ME background.

Dr. Wei Xiong gave two invited talks at the TMS annual conference in San Diego, California

  • Date: 2020-02-24

Talks: - “CALPHAD Method in Complex Concentrated Alloy Development: New Opportunities” - “CALPHAD-based ICME Design for Additive Manufacturing: Successes and Challenges”

Dr. Wei Xiong gave an invited talk at ASM Pittsburgh Chapter February Meeting — Young Members Night

  • Date: 2020-02-21

Dr. Xiong presented research and viewpoints on CALPHAD-based ICME for Additive Manufacturing. (> Read more information here.)

Engineering Day — InvestingNOW outreach

  • Date: 2020-02-08

The PMMD Lab organized an InvestingNOW engineering day introducing materials science and engineering to a group of Grade 11 underrepresented minority students.

Group lunch in 2019

  • Date: 2019-12-21

Year-end lab lunch with PMMD graduates and postdocs. Thanks everyone for hard work in 2019.

Outreach: SciTech Day at Carnegie Science Center

  • Date: 2019-11-15

The PMMD Lab sponsored the Carnegie Science Center SciTech Day (11/13–11/15). We designed demos for K–12 students on additive manufacturing, crystal structure, thermodynamics, and microstructure. Thanks to Noah, Rafael, Liangyan, Kun, Dario, and Yue for exceptional contributions.

Dr. Wei Xiong introduces the CALPHAD approach in the Jones Seminar at Dartmouth College

  • Date: 2019-09-27

Dr. Xiong presented at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth. The talk introduced phase diagrams, Materials Genome, CALPHAD, ICME, and alloy discovery to a broad audience, with a case study on Fe–Ni alloys emphasizing magnetic ordering energy in metastable phase prediction, and AM design integrating CALPHAD with mechanical engineering tools. Also highlighted potential extension of CALPHAD to biology (bacterial flagella).

Congratulations to Noah Sargent on the NASA fellowship

  • Date: 2019-05-02

SSOE announced Noah Sargent (then ME senior) received the NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship (NSTRF). He began MSE PhD at Pitt in fall with Dr. Wei Xiong as PI. Award: $80,000/year up to four years. Proposal: “Integrated Computational Design of Graded Alloys Made with Additive Manufacturing.”

Dr. Kun Li joined us as a Postdoctoral Associate working on additive manufacturing

  • Date: 2019-05-03

Dr. Li (PhD, Tsinghua University) joined PMMD to work on alloy additive manufacturing and ICME process development.

Dr. Shuying Chen joined us as a Postdoctoral Associate working on the integrated computational materials design for additive manufacturing

  • Date: 2019-05-01

Dr. Chen (PhD, University of Tennessee, Knoxville) joined PMMD to work on advanced alloy development and high-entropy alloys using ICME.

Dr. Soumya Sridar joined us as a Postdoctoral Associate working on the CALPHAD approach

  • Date: 2019-04-03

Dr. Sridar (PhD, IIT Madras) joined PMMD for thermodynamic modeling and CALPHAD database development, and to contribute to ICME experiments guided by CALPHAD predictions.

Master thesis defense by Matthew Gargani

  • Date: 2019-03-26

Congratulations to Mr. Matthew Gargani on a successful thesis defense. Committee feedback included: “this is the best master presentation so far I have ever participated.” Matthew contributed significantly to ONR AMANE corrosion testing and prepared a thesis on IN718 homogenization.

Dr. Wei Xiong visited Cornell University for MAE colloquium

  • Date: 2019-03-19

Dr. Wei Xiong visited the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University on 3/19, and gave a colloquium with the title about “CALPHAD-based ICME for Materials Design in Additive Manufacturing”. The presentation covers the progress of additive manufacturing research performed by the PMMD Lab at Pitt using the research results funded by ONR and NASA as an example. link to the abstract

Dr. Wei Xiong becomes the vice-chair of the TMS alloy phases committee

  • Date: 2019-03-13

Dr. Xiong participated in the TMS 2019 conference week. As the TMS ICME Education Sub-Committee Chair, he organized the ICME education symposium. He was also elected vice-chair of the TMS Alloy Phases Committee.

Installation of Netzsch DSC404 F1 for thermal analysis

  • Date: 2018-11-27

The PMMD Lab equipped the DSC404 F1 (Netzsch) for thermal analysis. It determines heat capacity, transformation temperatures, and reaction heat from room temperature to 1650 °C. Xin Wang and Liangyan Hao lead training and calibration.

PMMD lab co-authored a paper published in Science Advances

  • Date: 2018-10-24

Co-authored publication reports a high-entropy alloy with hierarchical nanoprecipitates and ultrahigh tensile strength: - “A high-entropy alloy with hierarchical nanoprecipitates and ultrahigh strength,” Science Advances 4(10) (2018) eaat8712. Abstract describes precipitation strengthening achieving σ0.2 ≈ 1.86 GPa and UTS ≈ 2.52 GPa with ~5.2% failure strain.

Welcome the new PhD student Liangyan Hao

  • Date: 2018-08-21

We welcome Ms. Liangyan Hao (HUST, China). Background in metals casting and manufacturing; strong interest in mathematics and phase transformations.

Calculating a New Design — DOE award ($750,000) to Pitt collaborating with UTRC

  • Date: 2018-08-20

DOE Crosscutting Technology Research Program funded “Integrated Computational Materials and Mechanical Modeling for Additive Manufacturing of Alloys with Graded Structure Used in Fossil Fuel Power Plants,” led by Wei Xiong (PI) and Albert To (Co-PI) with UTRC (Michael Klecka). The project integrates ICME materials and mechanical modeling for wire-arc AM of graded alloys to meet AUSC plant demands. Modeling covers thermal history, melt pool, phase stability, grain morphology/texture, and high-temperature properties.

Picnicking at the Ohiopyle State Park

  • Date: 2018-08-12

The PMMD Lab enjoyed a hiking day at Ohiopyle State Park.