NEWS

For students enrolled in Louisiana Tech University’s College of Engineering and Science (COES) graduate programs, Rifat-E-Nur Hossain is a familiar name. When the doctoral student is not working on groundbreaking nanosystems and manufacturing research, she is fulfilling her duties as the public relations officer for the College of Engineering and Science Graduate Student Council, helping engage the graduate student community.

The graduate student council is an official representative body with elected officers who organize seminars, workshops, competitions, and cultural and recreational events. These events provide students with networking and bonding opportunities to support scholarly activities and create better communication among COES Graduate Studies community members.

After being elected to the publicity chair position last spring, Hossain helped organize a career talk that included a ceremony honoring 2020-2021 graduates and outstanding teaching assistants. This quarter, she is working with the rest of the council to plan events, including an upcoming COES Symposium that will include a seminar on cutting-edge research topics covered by Louisiana Tech faculty and a poster presentation competition for COES graduate students.

“The graduate council serves an important purpose by representing students and organizing activities to enrich the graduate student experience,” said Dr. Collin Wick, associate dean for graduate studies at the College of Engineering and Science. “Rifat has done a tremendous job serving as one of the main ambassadors of the council and has demonstrated great leadership in helping forward its mission.”

Hossain, who is a student member of the Louisiana Tech Louisiana Materials Design Alliance (LAMDA) cohort and is pursuing a doctoral degree in engineering, is familiar with the challenges that graduate students face and understands that having a community of people to lean on can help make difficult situations better.

“I am glad to have the public relations officer position on the COES Graduate Student Council, as my work allows me to connect and get acquainted with my fellow graduate students and alumni. Being an officer of the council allows me to work for the COES graduate students and, thereby, serve the University. We aim to create better communication among the students of diverse COES graduate programs, share their research and achievements, and address their academic concerns. We try to design our activities in a way that can help the graduate students both in their graduate and post-graduate work lives.”

Hossain divides the time she spends on her studies between working on her dissertation, immersed in research into thermoreflectance, a technique of thermometry that measures the thermal transport properties of bulk materials and nanosystems, and working on LAMDA research.

As a member of the LAMDA cohort, Hossain is part of a $20-million-dollar National Science Foundation project to transform research and education in advanced manufacturing and materials throughout Louisiana. For the project, she works with her doctoral advisor, Dr. Arden L. Moore, associate professor of mechanical engineering and nanosystems engineering with the University’s College of Engineering and Science and the Institute for Micromanufacturing (IfM), to help construct calibration of materials and process monitoring systems for additive manufacturing.

Her project, the Science Enabler-1, i.e., additive manufacturing process monitoring, includes developing an in situ real-time temperature monitoring system to achieve defect detection in additive manufacturing.

“It’s exciting to see the pieces of a project as large as LAMDA come together,” she said. “So far, we have developed a monitoring system and defect detection technique for a commercial fused deposition modeling-based 3D printer, and we are looking forward to modifying and integrating our system with the MELD manufacturing’s friction stir welding additive manufacturing machine. Our monitoring technique along with the material emissivity calibration method has been already peer-reviewed and accepted for publication in the Additive Manufacturing journal.”

“Rifat is an excellent student who strengthens the research enterprise at Louisiana Tech through her strong work ethic, attention to detail, and natural problem-solving skills,” Moore added. “She does not shy away from challenges or opportunities to grow into new areas of research. These intangibles, when combined with the engineering and science skills she is gaining through her education at Tech and hands-on research at the IfM, make me excited about what the future holds.”