Dr. Kumar Ankit, formerly a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been appointed assistant professor at Arizona State University.
“As a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, the day-to-day Interactions with faculty members and other postdoctoral researchers enhanced my knowledge-base in optimization of functional properties of materials and other fields beyond my area of expertise,” Ankit said. “This resulted in the cross-fertilization of ideas, which in the future, will promote more scientific collaborations.”
Ankit received an integrated bachelor of technology and master's of technology degree in metallurgical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, and earned his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, graduating summa cum laude.
“My research is focused on computational materials science with an emphasis on phase-field modeling,” Ankit said. “I chose to accept the offer from ASU because my research activities align nicely with their vision of 4-D materials science.”
Ankit received the prestigious Early Career Investigator Award from the German Research Foundation in 2016, enabling him to pursue research in the area of microstructural pattern formation in multicomponent steels. He joined the research group of Dr. Michael Demkowicz in the summer of 2016, where he worked on phase field simulations of metal composites synthesized by physical vapor deposition.
“A major area of interest for us is to enable new ways of predicting and directing how such composites form during processing,” Demkowicz said. “Ankit implemented large-scale, fully 3-D simulations of microstructure evolution during physical vapor deposition and provided quantitative predictions that have since been validated experimentally.”
Ankit will begin his appointment at Arizona State University in the fall of 2017.