Mike Rawlings

    Alumnus (Ph.D. Candidate)

    Phone: 847.467.3996
    Email: michaeljsrawlings@gmail.com
    Address: 2220 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208

I was born in Baltimore, MD but raised in Dallas, TX. I received my BS in applied physics from Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA. During undergrad, I had the opportunity to work for roughly a year at the Naval Research Laboratory in the Material Science Division. I worked on nanocrystalline soft magnetic alloys and participated in everything from fabrication to characterization to analysis. Later in my matriculation at Morehouse, I was able to spend a summer working in the Materials Science department at Georgia Tech-Lorraine in Metz, France, just an hour outside of Paris. I learned just as much from the abroad experience as I did from my project, which focused on nano-selective area growth of GaN. These two experiences in particular are what open my eyes to the girth of topic that can be studied in Materials Science.

Currently, I am working on a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University in the Dunand Group. My project involves testing, characterizing and modeling ferritic alloys for high temperature applications. These alloys exhibit the same gamma- gamma prime microstructure that gives Ni-based superalloys their notable strength and creep resistants. These unique properties combined with relatively cheap base materials makes this alloy ideally suited to be used in future generations of coal power plants. Our alloys could help increase the efficiency of these plants, thus leading to decreased fuel consumption.

Selected Honors

  1. 2012 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow
  2. 2010 Walter P. Murphy Fellow

Publications

  1. S. Bhattacharya, E.A. Lass, S.J. Poon, G.J. Shiflet, M.J.S. Rawlings, M. Daniil, and M.A. Willard., 2012, Magnetic Properties and Thermal Stability of (Fe,Co)-Mo-B-P-Si Metallic Glasses. Journal of Applied Physics, v. 111, issue 6