Abigail Hunter, Ph.D.
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Friday, December 4th at 3pm
Abstract: This seminar will focus on my career path and why I chose to major in Mechanical Engineering, which ultimately led to a career in computational materials science. I initially wanted a major that offered opportunities and growth in a wide-range of fields. Now that I have focused my research primarily on the deformation and failure of structural materials, I find that there are still a broad range of open research questions that are both interesting and exciting to explore. During my career, I have developed an interest in mentoring young scientists. I’ll discuss some of the interesting research projects that students and postdocs I mentor are working on, showing the diverse nature of our research.
Bio: Dr. Abigail Hunter earned a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University in 2011, and a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Utah in 2006. Following her Ph.D., she became a postdoctoral research associate at LANL in 2011 in the Lagrangian Codes Group (XCP-1), and converted to a staff scientist in 2012. She recently moved to the Materials and Physical Data Group (XCP-5). Her research focuses on understanding and modeling mesoscale deformation mechanisms in metals and alloys. Dr. Hunter has established expertise in deformation behavior at multiple length scales and also with scaling information upwards in length and time scales, with an effort to develop more physically informed continuum-scale material models. She actively mentors both post-doctoral research associates and graduate students. Recently in 2018, she was the recipient of the Distinguished Mentor Award for outstanding performance in mentoring. In 2019 she was the recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientist and Engineers (PECASE), which is the highest honor bestowed by the US government on scientists and engineers who show exceptional promise for leadership in science and technology are in the early stages of their independent research careers.
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