Materials processing often drives materials far from equilibrium, coupling flow, thermal history, chemistry, and structure evolution across multiple length and time scales. Additive manufacturing (AM) provides a particularly challenging and scientifically rich example of such processing, but many of the same fundamental questions arise across a broader class of soft, polymeric, composite, and architected materials. Despite significant advances, a quantitative understanding of the process–structure–property relationships governing microstructure development, anisotropy, and failure in these systems remains incomplete.

The Materials Science and Engineering Division seeks NRC postdoctoral researchers interested in fundamental measurement science for materials processing, using additive manufacturing and related processes as model systems. Research will emphasize the development of quantitative experimental methods, data, and models that elucidate how processing conditions govern structure formation and mechanical response in materials subjected to complex, non-equilibrium processing histories.

Representative research directions include, but are not limited to:

• In-situ and operando characterization of flow, solidification, curing, or phase evolution during materials processing using scattering, spectroscopic, thermal, or optical techniques.
• Rheological, transport, and kinetic measurements relevant to soft, polymeric, composite, and other architected materials processed under AM-relevant or analogous conditions.
• Quantification of molecular, microstructural, or mesoscale organization, including orientation, crystallization, phase separation, and interfacial structure arising during processing.
• Fracture mechanics and damage-based measurements as probes of process-induced anisotropy, interfaces, and structural heterogeneity.
• Development of experimental platforms, workflows, and data structures that enable reproducible, physics-based studies of processing–structure–mechanical response relationships.

This research is fundamentally motivated, with an emphasis on measurement fidelity, uncertainty, and generalizability. While the resulting methods and tools may ultimately support broader community use or standards development, the primary objective is to advance the foundational science of materials processing, structure development, and mechanical behavior.

Successful candidates will work at the intersection of materials physics, processing science, advanced characterization, and mechanics within a collaborative research environment that includes state-of-the-art laboratory instrumentation and access to national user facilities.

Materials processing; Additive manufacturing; Soft materials; Polymers; Architected materials; Rheology; Fracture mechanics; Process–structure–property relationships; In-situ characterization; Measurement science

citizenship

Open to U.S. citizens

level

Open to Postdoctoral applicants