{"id":20996,"date":"2024-12-06T13:42:19","date_gmt":"2024-12-06T18:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/?p=20996"},"modified":"2024-12-19T15:54:14","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T20:54:14","slug":"flying-high-in-aerospace-materials-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2024\/12\/flying-high-in-aerospace-materials-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Flying High in Aerospace Materials Research"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Jocelyn<\/a>
Jocelyn Freed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Jocelyn Freed last visited the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., the fourth-year materials science and engineering major was drawn to a video showcasing Amy Ross, an engineer who designs space suits for NASA. It would turn out to be a defining moment for Freed. Soon after, she decided she would pursue a materials engineering career related to aerospace.<\/p>\n

\u201cUp until then, I didn\u2019t think that a job so specific like making spacesuits could be available to me,\u201d Freed says. \u201cAfter that, I got interested in not just spacesuits, but also coatings and all things aerospace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last summer, she landed an internship at the aerospace startup Ursa Major, funded by the Brooke Owens Fellowship, which encourages women\u2019s participation in the field. There, she tested the hardness, tensile, and fatigue strength of nickel \u201csuperalloys\u201d strengthened with elements like cobalt or carbon. (Nickel alloys are ideal for aerospace applications because of their high strength to weight and resistance to extreme temperatures.) The tests involved evaluating the forces at which the alloys fracture or break apart. Freed also studied the structure of the alloys using optical and scanning electron microscopy, and jumped in to write a simpler manual for the startup\u2019s optical microscope, complete with illustrations, after noting the group\u2019s existing manual was long and difficult to understand.<\/p>\n

This academic year, Freed gets to work on space suits as part of her senior design project. In the lab of Michael Bevan<\/a>, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering<\/a>, she is evaluating the effects of electrical fields on microscopic colloidal particles, which are tiny particles suspended in fluid. A space suit coated with such materials would more effectively repel \u201cspace junk,\u201d materials that can pierce the suit, causing air to leak out.<\/p>\n

Freed says she especially loves the intersection of materials science and aerospace because it opens so many opportunities and topics to explore. \u201cThe field of aerospace materials sounds so specific, but at the same time, it\u2019s so broad; you can work on metals, on polymers, on ceramics. It\u2019s a lot of fun,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

No matter what she pursues after her undergraduate studies, Freed knows there will be room for art, which she is pursuing through a minor at JHU. \u201cI\u2019ve always been a creative person,\u201d she says. \u201cArt exercises a different part of my brain.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Jocelyn Freed last visited the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., the fourth-year materials science and engineering major was drawn to a video showcasing Amy Ross, an engineer who designs space suits for NASA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":21182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-students","issue-winter-2025"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFlying High in Aerospace Materials Research - JHU Engineering Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"After Jocelyn Freed last visited the National Air and Space Museum she decided she would pursue a materials engineering career related to aerospace.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2024\/12\/flying-high-in-aerospace-materials-research\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Flying High in Aerospace Materials Research - 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