Materials science meets bluegrass: A day in the life

My name is Jason Birsic. I'm a first year grad student here at Virginia Tech in the Materials Science and Engineering department. I started here in June after graduating from Clemson University with a degree in mechanical engineering. So every week, Monday through Thursday, I'm here at the Yu Research Group lab. We're an off campus lab that houses a lot of cool equipment for AFSD which is additive friction stir deposition. We research a solid state additive manufacturing process for metals. And what that means is that we do not melt it and instead use physical force to create new materials. It truly is an awesome environment. Being able to hang out with other people who love to get their hands dirty doing some research. I was recruited to work on the small machine here because of my mechanical engineering background. We mainly use it to test all sorts of new materials, because being able to print in the small scale is much cheaper and much less dangerous than printing on the large scale. I get to experiment with lots of never before seen materials for AFSD. Our goal is to try and make this small machine fully transportable so that it can be used for repair. Our biggest example of this is F-18 on aircraft carriers. We're very hopeful for this technology, being able to repair aircraft in the field would be huge. So every morning I'm here until about noon or so, and then I'll go home, eat lunch, and head off to campus for class. My class today is called Math Methods and Materials Research. And it focuses on a lot of calculus principles, linear algebra principles and how you apply them to materials research. It's really good to be able to see these principles in action from a new perspective. We do a lot of work in a software called Mathematica, being able to learn another software in a new light. It's very helpful just for the future being able to code. We're all probably going to have to do it. Tonight we'll be going to the Rising Silo Brewery, where the Bluegrass Club, plus any other community members that want to show up are going to come and play. Music is a huge part of my life. Absolutely love doing it just to blow off steam or just hang out with friends, meet people. I did manage to join a band here. We've had some gigs here around town. But then outside of that band, it’s also just a great community of students here in the Bluegrass Club. So it's a great time to be there and meet students and community members. It was, you know, a bit of a leap of faith to leave where you went for undergrad. And I'm sure everybody relates when you graduate, you know, it's hard to leave. I'm so glad that I found another community here, supportive lab partners, supportive musicians that I play with. My professors are great, my roommate’s great, her dog’s great too. I truly am happy that I was able to move here and get into such a great situation.