Student teams from across the country recently competed in the annual ASM-GT Materials Data Challenge, held on April 8 – 9, 2016. The two-day event was sponsored by From Learning, Analytics, and Materials to Entrepreneurship and Leadership (FLAMEL) and focused on the emerging discipline of materials informatics.  

Each spring the challenge invites students from all over the nation to Georgia Tech and provides professional networking opportunities and a platform to present their ideas. The year’s challenge included a juried competition of researchers from ASM International, with participating students from computer science, data science, and materials science. The student teams gave presentations to show their approach to solving a given problem, which amazed and inspired the judges and mentors. This year’s problem was to determine the heat treatment needed to redesign an alloy-based aircraft part with missing specifications.

The Iron Dragons Team, consisting of David Freiberg, Christine Palmer, and Axel-Jose Persinger, all of Drexel University, took home the grand prize of $500. They successfully applied their understanding of materials science and data analytics to reverse engineer the part. Their presentation provided the most accurate, in-depth explanation of how to solve the problem in the most economical fashion. 

For additional information on the FLAMEL Doctoral Traineeship Program, please refer to the links provided.

FLAMEL Doctoral Traineeship Program: http://flamel.gatech.edu