About me:
I’m currently a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University. I acquired my BS degree in Mechatronics at the University of Technology – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam in 2007. Later, I was pursuing M.S. in Control and System at Texas A&M University, a university of traditions and honors to me, starting in Fall 2008. During my MS career, I realized my passion for Materials Science, particularly Computational Materials Science and Engineering; I decided to change my major for PhD career at the same beloved school in Spring 2011. I find that this decision is a great turn in my life, in which I’m passionately enjoying my work, researches, studies and above all my life as a materials scientist.
Research:
Methodology: At the moment, I’m specializing in Ab initio study of electronic structures in materials. In specific, the first principle method I’m working on is Density Functional Theory (DFT) – A method to solve the Schodinger’s equation for electronic structures and properties that can be derived from it. I’m mostly interested in using DFT to study the thermodynamic properties of materials. From these calculated quantities, it can be explained why materials exist in a particular form. By combining with CALPHAD – A package to calculate phase diagrams, one can further understand more about the microstructure evolution of materials and their stable structure at a specific temperature and composition.
Materials of Interest: The materials I’m working on include: metallic fuels for Gen-IV reactors, MAX phases – high temperature advance alloys, high entropy alloys, shape memory alloys and thin film diffusion.
Achievements:
Summer 2012 – Intern at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Spring 2012 – Lab Assistant at IIMEC Winter School – Texas A&M University.
Summer 2011 – Scholarship Fellow at ICMEd Summer School – University of Michigan.