Anas Abu-Odeh, an undergraduate student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University, represented the university at the sixth Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Symposium that was hosted by the Council on Undergraduate Research in Arlington, Virginia.
Abu-Odeh was a participant this summer in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering’s Multifunctional Materials and presented the outcomes of his research conducted during the summer to National Science Foundation (NSF) program officers.
“Going to the REU symposium gave me an opportunity to interact with students from other REU sites across the nation,” said Abu-Odeh. “We explored cool and interesting topics such as using systems controls and mathematical modeling to understand biological phenomena, or using 3-D printing to create new forms of tangible user interfaces.”
Dr. Raymundo Arróyave, associate professor in the materials science and engineering department, supervised Abu-Odeh’s research, which he presented at the symposium. His research poster, “A Constraint Satisfaction Problem Approach to High-Entropy Alloy Design,” highlighted constraint satisfaction problem approach, a computational search algorithm that was used to search high-entropy alloy design space.
“High-entropy alloys represent regions of unexplored alloy design space where the alloying elements share near-equiatomic concentrations,” said Abu-Odeh. “This differs from traditional alloys which typically have one dominating element.”
All student attendees at the symposium were nominated by the REU sites they represented for having demonstrated outstanding performance in their summer research experience.
“My REU summer research gave me experience in learning new software and materials science principles relating to my research,” said Abu-Odeh. “However, the most valuable take away was that it gave me a chance to practice my presentation skills by having to constantly present progress reports to the MSEN REU group.”