Chemical and materials engineering students earned awards, received scholarships and led student talks at the recent NACE CORROSION 2019 Conference.
Vilupanur Ravi, chair of the chemical and materials engineering department, and 40 Cal Poly Pomona students attended the Houston conference in March—the largest corrosion event in the world.
Sixteen of the more than 100 posters on display were done by Cal Poly Pomona students.
Thu Nguyen earned third place in The Harvey Herro Prize for Applied Corrosion Technology competition for her team’s work on advanced titanium alloys for knee implants.
Ho Lun Chan, representing the metal foam team, won the Best Undergraduate Poster prize. Chan and Jaewan Bae received scholarships from the NACE Los Angeles section.
“Many hurdles have to be overcome before students can present a poster or a technical talk at an international meeting such as this one. Each and every one of these students worked very hard to develop, implement and execute their projects,” Ravi said. “On top of this they had to prepare posters or presentations, hone their communication skills and overcome their jitters in presenting their work to a world-class technical audience.”
Ravi presented two invited lectures at the conference — one on titanium alloy corrosion at the Biomedical Materials Research in Progress Symposium and a lecture on high-temperature corrosion.
“I am proud of all of them and am delighted that we have brought back two prestigious awards to Cal Poly Pomona,” he said. “I look forward to continued success.”