Nellie Pestian

Process Parameters, Defects, and Reliability in Ceramic Vat Photopolymerization

BIO:

Nellie Pestian is a Materials Science PhD student at Colorado School of Mines, advised by Dr. Joy Gockel in ceramic additive manufacturing (AM) research. After completing her B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering at Wright State University in 2020, Nellie spent two years working in the metal additive manufacturing industry at MRL Materials Resources LLC. While at MRL, Nellie led and contributed to various projects surrounding process monitoring and qualification/certification of the metal laser powder bed fusion process. She hopes to translate her experience with metal AM to the burgeoning field of ceramic AM during her time at Mines. She is especially interested in exploring how computer vision and data science techniques can be applied to data from materials characterization and process monitoring to make new discoveries. In her spare time, Nellie enjoys hiking and rock climbing, as well as reading, playing board games, and expanding her collection of Lego models.

Nellie Pestian was awarded the CoorsTek Fellowship starting in Fall 2022.

BIO:

Ceramic additive manufacturing via vat photopolymerization (VPP) is a complex, multi-step process with many controlling parameters. This means that there are multiple sources of uncertainty regarding the quality of the final part. The goal of this project is to investigate process-structure-property relationships in ceramic VPP parts by identifying when, why, and how defects form, so that defects can be avoided, or reliably detected. Such results are necessary for informing development of process monitoring for VPP, as well as enabling accelerated process parameter development when new materials and applications arise.