In March 2020, Dr. Nikhilesh Chawla accepted a position as the Ransburg Professor of Materials Engineering at Purdue University, and this fall he begins teaching and research in West Lafayette, Indiana. Joining him from Arizona State University are a group of new and existing researchers. Sridhar Niverty, Hamid Torbatisarraf, and visiting scholar Fengjian Wang are starting or continuing in postdoctorate positions. Amey Luktuke, Ted Huang, and Swapnil Morankar are continuing their PhD studies with Chawla. Rahul Franklin and Daniel Sinclair are beginning PhD programs after earning a master's and bachelor's degree from ASU, respectively. 

The group has established lab spaces in the Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering and FLEX Lab. They will be awaiting renovations to accomodate a comprehensive array of characterization, processing, and testing equipment, including a new Versa 620. The team will be continuing existing projects in environmentally assisted fracture of aluminum, mechanics of solders, and correlative microscopy of biological and meteoric samples. New projects focused on additively manufactured aluminum and machine learning tools to expedite x-ray tomography processes are also underway, with more expected to begin as new students join.

The group looks forward to a succesful relationship with Purdue University and already has appreciated its welcome in West Lafayette.