Dr. Michael Sangid, School of Aeronautics and Astronautics Assistant Professor, has been selected as a recipient of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award. The objective of the DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) program is to identify and engage rising research stars in junior faculty positions at U.S. academic institutions and expose them to Department of Defense needs as well as DARPA’s program development process.

The Young Faculty Award program provides funding, mentoring, and industry and Department of Defense contacts to awardees early in their careers so they may develop their research ideas in the context of DoD needs. The program focuses on untenured faculty, emphasizing those without prior DARPA funding. The long-term goal of the YFA program is to develop the next generation of academic scientists, engineers and mathematicians in key disciplines who will focus a significant portion of their career on DoD and national security issues.

Details of the DARPA Project
Predictive Materials Science and Fatigue Life Prognosis - Foundational research is needed for time-dependent Integrated Computational Materials Engineering tools that predict the effect of microstructural parameters on damage accumulation and fatigue response. Ultimately such efforts would tie process parameters to component life. Approaches will incorporate microstructure measurements with probabilistic variation as model inputs for direct metal laser sintering of common aerospace alloys - Ti-6Al-4V and IN718.  Specifically, the project focuses on a confluence of microstructure based modeling and in situ experiments.