Dmitry Bedrov
Dmitry's Bedrov's appointment as chair of the Department of Materials Science began January 1. With two ABET accreditations, the department is seated in two colleges: the College of Science (Metallurgical Engineering program) and the College of Engineering (Materials Science & Engineering program).
The merger of metallurgical and material science departments in 2018 was designed to streamline operations for faculty and students with significant funding from the Department of Energy for critical materials research. Metallurgical engineering faculty collaborate extensively with material science faculty. Many MSE students enroll in classes from chemistry and physics, bridging science and engineering.
Bedrov earned his BS with honors in 1995 from Odessa State Academy of Refrigeration in Odessa, Ukraine, followed by a PhD (1999) and postdoctoral work (1999-2002) in Chemical & Fuels Engineering and Computational Modeling of Materials at the University of Utah, respectively. His research interest lies in the area of multiscale modeling of soft-condensed matter systems that exhibit complex, multiscale structure often arising from molecular and super-molecular self-assembly.
New lab, new equipment
Bedrov’s arrival as chair is happening at an auspicious time for the department which has recently acquired a new, state-of-the-art additive manufacturing research center featuring a multi-million-dollar titanium 3D printing machine. The lab will serve as a hub for the collaboration between Metallurgical Engineering Professor Zak Fang's powder metallurgy research team and the company IperionX as they work to advance metallurgical technologies for producing primary metals focused on titanium.
Other new equipment includes an X-ray Instrument to keep pace with the global-leading high-resolution 3D imaging research in metallurgical engineering at the U.
The X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) in 3D characterization of particulate systems significantly strengthens researcher capability in mineral processing studies. Together, these new acquisitions have helped maintain the U's metallurgical engineering program as arguably the best in the country. Bedrov will lead MSE at a time when extensive collaboration is occurring on campus in the areas of materials informatics, additive manufacturing, and biomaterials and interfaces..
A key project emblematic of the department’s interdisciplinary research involves collaborating with the U’s School of Dentistry to use machine learning to optimize dental materials, like filler composites. Currently the evaluation of dental materials is predominantly qualitative, relying heavily on the experience and subjective judgment. Imaging of extracted teeth with deployed polymers followed by machine learning in MSE can help clinicians, like dentists, understand the best formulations and application practices at work.
Attracting new students
Fronting the interdisciplinary research like that in collaboration with the School of Dentistry, the department aims to attract students who often only learn about what the department offers after they’ve arrived at the U and sometimes after they’ve already declared a major. High school outreach and competitions, highlighting MSE’s small, diverse student body and interdisciplinary research will be a priority for Bedrov along with enhancing faculty support and increasing collaboration with other departments.
“It is an exciting time to lead the department to address new research challenges, e.g. in critical materials, quantum materials and biomedical applications, and to provide new learning opportunities for students, e.g. incorporation of AI and machine learning tools into the education process.”
Pratt Rogers
Pratt Rogers is keenly aware of the challenges in the industry. To meet the growing need for technological devices and power demands in the U.S., rare earth minerals and critical minerals and material (CMM) will be at a premium. More than half of the periodic table goes into producing and running a smartphone, and anything in the periodic table must be extracted from the Earth. Ethically mined minerals and metals for a new green economy with auspicious plans to reach a carbon-neutral state sooner than later will require building consensus among many different stakeholders.
Meeting that demand through mining is something Rogers calls our generation’s “moon shot” referring to NASA’s Apollo 11 program in the 1960s to get humans from the Earth to the moon and back safely. The technology around safe mineral and materials extractions has been the bread-and-butter of the department since it was first established in 1901, and that work continues. But today issuing new permits, mining safely and restoring landscapes post-extraction , among other industry concerns, must thread through government and tribal officials and other policy-makers, non-governmental organizations with various concerns and agenda … even cultural anthropologists who look at social and cultural impacts.
Three Ds
“In the United States,” says Rogers, “we have strong institutions with great environmental and human protections. And that’s phenomenal; it’s a mark of progress. But with institutions that strong, when trying to create industrial projects [new and retrofitted historical mines], the easy path to a 'no' is usually taken and the much more difficult path to a conditional 'yes' is passed over in litigation.”
The hard conversations about complex issues society needs to have, Rogers believes, are not just about traditional mining. but involve the “three D’s” of this energy future moonshot: density — “a lot of output from little input, like nuclear power”; development and processing of CMM for purer, more concentrated material; and distribution — renewable energy sources like a wind and solar that require larger inputs, or “more stuff connecting all those things together.”
“It’s hard to break [different constituents] out of being [animated by] a single issue." he says. "It’s hard for anyone to be able to appreciate that there are wider optimization algorithms that society has to take on when you're trying to solve for some sort of equilibrium for development or distribution.”
The university setting, he believes, is the best place for these formal debates in place of the silo-ed arguments staged on social media or even traditional media. A first-generation college student, Rogers earned his bachelor's and PhD in mining engineering from the University of Arizona. Since then he has garnered extensive business and research experience in socio-technical systems, big data analysis, mining technology as well as safety and health management systems.
As department chair of the Department of Mining Engineering his collaboration at the college level with mineral processing and with metallurgy and geological characterization will continue while making sure that students get full access to important educational opportunities, either formally through scholarships and internships and informally around field trips and shared social spaces. Sustaining this kind of educational nexus with a premium on student success is a priority for Rogers.
Recruitment
Recruitment of new students to the department has increased year-over-year, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic has receded. The popular Minecraft sandbox video game has helped in that area. So too have recent open houses for high school students who not only need to know that a mining department exists but that mining has played and will continue to play an important if not critical role in deploying a sustainable green economy for future generations, including their own. So too has recent funding for student experiences which includes the recent Mining Engineering Student Experience Endowment in Memory of Wallie Rasmussen which supports international field trips, for example, to the world largest open pit copper mine in Mongolia.
As for administrative work, Rogers hopes to grow the faculty endowed chairs, funding from industry, government and individual donors, especially the departments’ valued alumni. Students will always be at the center of these growth opportunities as the mining piece of the future of the green economy’s carbon-zero aspiration by necessity is brought to the fore. “Its a great time to work on growing the mining engineering department."
