The 2019 MIE Ferretti and Yamamura fellowship (teaching category) was awarded to Xiaoyu (Criss) Zhang, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Northeastern University.
Since Criss entered the MIE Ph.D. program in Fall 2016, he has been actively engaged in teaching for 6 semesters. Criss has closely worked with 6 ME professors on 3 ME core courses (ME 2340 & ME 2341 “Introduction to Material Science” (lecture class and lab class, respectively) and ME 5600 “Materials Processing and Process Selection”), and has provided instructions to ~1000 undergraduate and graduate students in MIE Department.
Criss is currently in his 3rd year with Nanomagnetism Research Group at Northeastern University. His dissertation focuses on understanding and tailoring first-order phase transformations in a variety of magneto-functional materials, using processing variables such as temperature, magnetic field, and mechanical stress. These materials are under consideration for next-generation, highly efficient energy-related devices.