Our Women’s Network events range from those centered around diversity issues in the workplace (see my previous post on Navigating the Glass Maze), lunch and learn events on GE benefits for new and expecting  moms, activities outside of work such as a cross-country skiing event, and more technology and networking focused events, such as this Women in Technology lunch and learn – so we have something to offer for just about everyone!

This is just one example of the many powerful characterization tools that we have here have at our fingertips for studying materials!

My work is #43 in the video and comes in at about :27-30 seconds.

What you see is a plasma spray deposition of ceramics that my team and I were working on here at GE Global Research. My role on the team is to analyze the microstructures of the ceramic layer and provide feedback so that processing parameters can be adjusted to develop the optimal microstructure and properties of the ceramic. We couldn’t quite fit that explanation into the video, so I wanted to post about it here!

I hope you enjoyed the video, please be just to check us out on Twitter as well. My handle is @KristenBrosnan but you can also follow Global Research and the blog @EdisonsDesk or the main GE account @GeneralElectric. Happy tweeting!

Last week, a group of ten of us at Global Research packed into a small conference room over lunch to participate in the New York State Capital District Society of Women Engineers and Excelsior College’s webinar “Negotiating  the Glass Maze”.  Local women in technology and academia served as panelists sharing with us their experiences of how they achieved career success- despite the staggering odds.  I captured some of the comments from the panelists that I thought were interesting during the discussion.

On balancing work and home, especially raising young children while working in and engineering industry, Adrian Skinner (GE Wind) advised us not to try to do too much, and don’t set our expectations too high– just be the best you can put forth.  Great advice to all of us perfectionist-types out there that are used to great attention to detail (at work and at home).  Adrian also recommended integrating your job into your family as much as possible, using her own experience with wind turbines as an example.  Debra Brovich (GE Global Research) suggested to ask for workplace flexibility. It came up more than once during the panel discussion on a variety of topics that you will never get something if you never ask.

On the topic of navigating the glass maze, Debra recognized that HR needs to help managers understand what building blocks young women in SET need and have those discussions early. Sheila Brey (Entergy Corporation) admitted that there will be dead ends and roadblocks in your career– but they have to be viewed as an opportunity.

On the topic of what skill sets make a you stand out as a leader, Tobi Saulnier (1^st Playable Productions) suggested to know the subtleties between traits such as stubbornness and perseverance (while they sound similar, a great leader displays perseverance). Also she suggested to constantly put yourself in others positions and really try to understand your people.

Afterward, there was some discussion amongst my colleagues at GE on the topics and it was largely agreed upon that we like the idea that integrating our family into our work as much as possible. We also agreed that during times where family needs take precedent for period of time(birth of a new baby, for example) that we can’t expect to be perfect during these times – and talking honestly about our imperfect experiences with other women (especially young women technologists) will help all of us realize that we aren’t alone- and give us a support network that we need.

Overall, the webinar was informative and we all appreciated the panelists taking their time to share with us their experiences. A big thanks to SWE and Excelsior College for hosting the webinar and Laura Hudy for organizing us on-site at GE Global Research to watch and discuss the topics. I hope it is the first of many on this topic! I’ll be sure to post future webinars on my twitter @kristenbrosnan.  If you have any experiences or advice to share, please comment below, I would love to hear from you.

On a side note, on Monday the White House and National Science Foundation announced new workplace flexibilities to support American scientists and their families. One of the benefits is being able to delay or suspend grants for up to one year after a birth of a child.  Details about this announcement can be found here.  Sounds like a step in the right direction for women in science!

Remember – if you are a woman in a SET career, you are not in it alone!

We have been following the recent press coverage about 3D printing or additive manufacturing with a great deal of interest. Additive manufacturing is the practice of building up material layer-by-layer to directly form a net-shape product. GE Global Research has been heavily engaged in the evaluation, adaption and development of additive manufacturing methods for the better part of the past decade. Our rapidly expanding additive manufacturing facilities include a wide range of commercial and home-3D printers covering several 1000 sq. feet of floor space. Recognizing the growing impact of this critical technology GE Global Research has recently set up a new Additive Manufacturing Lab.

GE scientists in the additive manufacturing lab are focused on pushing the state-of-the-art in the development and maturation of 3D printing methods to deposit intricate, high resolution net-shape geometries in a diverse range of functional materials. A significant GE-NIH collaborative effort involves the low-cost 3D printing of piezoelectric ultrasound transducers. Initial results from this research are very promising. In parallel, GE is making significant advances in maturing 3D printing technology for critical aviation components. Designers at GE Aviation are especially attracted by 3D printing’s ability to produce previously unmanufacturable designs. The combination these new designs & reliable material properties hold the promise of radically improved performance, reduced weight, fuel consumption and greenhouse gases in the exhaust of aircraft engines.

While a Star Trek-like 3D replicator is some decades away, we are very likely at the outset of a 3D printing revolution.  The technology is increasingly becoming accessible with sub-$2000 printers now available as DIY kits. Here at GE Global Research, we are excited about the technology and are working hard (it’s actually a lot of fun) to engineer the next generation of 3D printed GE products.

For those of you that are local, please look here for more information and for everyone—attending or not—please follow along the conversation using the Twitter hashtag #ny100 as New York State celebrates 100 years of superconductivity.

Hello everyone, my name is Nell Gamble. I am a PhD student in Materials at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I spent February through May of 2011 as a “summer” intern at GE Global Research.  My thesis research is on the response of alumina ceramic materials to dynamic impact events.  I am working to assess the predictive capability of a model which describes how the alumina material cracks during impact and how the cracked material flows around the impactor.  I will be defending my PhD in about a year, and I was curious about a career in industrial research.  A professor at UCSB suggested that I consider an internship with GE, a few months later I made the transition from sunny Santa Barbara to snowy Albany.

While at GE, I worked in the Engineered Ceramics lab helping to develop robust ceramic coatings for turbine components. My project team included scientists at all stages in their careers, from a few years out of grad school to industry leaders with decades of experience to draw from.  We all worked together to develop experiments, analyze results, and brainstorm methods for assessing and improving the coatings’ characteristics.  The collaborative atmosphere allowed me to make significant progress on my project and grow as a scientist.

It wasn’t all work for me in Schenectady.  The Albany area is situated amidst several beautiful mountain ranges and in easy driving or train distance from several big cities.  I braved the winter weather one weekend and visited Lake Placid for some downhill skiing. Things started warming up in April and I spent weekends in New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia. Overall, it was the chilliest “summer” internship I’ve ever had, but also the best.  I have decided to pursue a career in industrial research, possibly at GE, and gained valuable experience that will help me make important contributions as a materials scientist.

Special thanks to Anusha Gopal and Bouchra Bouqata from the GE Women’s Network for organizing this event!

GE Global Research’s own Johanna Wellington (far right) was one of the leaders that volunteered her time for the Women’s Network

Thanks to the GE Women’s Network event organizers and volunteers!

Last fall, I was in a mandolin class at Old Songs where a chemist at GE was also learning mandolin. Every once in awhile I see a guy that works down the hall bringing in his electric guitar –probably for band practice after work. A materials scientist that works with me on solid oxide fuel cells plays guitar.  I know of at least two banjo players (one plays bluegrass, one plays texas swing) that work at GE Global Research. There is at least one manager at GE that is a multi-instrumentalist.  A band made up entirely of GE scientists (Procedure 19 is their name) rocks out at open mic (yes, we have monthly open mic nights just for the musically inclined GE Global Research employees!).  For those that want to master voice, there is even a choral group that meets every Wednesday after work.

Now I am only a novice at mandolin, but it gives me a lot of satisfaction to play in my downtime (and maybe someday in the future I will even make my debut at open mic, but for now my family is my audience).  It really makes me wonder – how many of you readers out there are also moonlighting as musicians? What kind of music and what instruments do you play?

Above is a photo from our 110 Anniversary Celebration that took place in September 2010 for employees.  It is a picture of one of our employee bands called the Zombie Squirrels.  A few of the members you have heard from on the blog before!  In the back on the drums is Principal Scientist Radislav Potyrailo, on guitar is Mechanical Engineer Jonathan Janssen, and on vocals is Chemical Engineer Tiffany Westendorf!

These students have now graduated and finishing up their first semester at college. I wish the best of luck in college and in their science careers!!!! Perhaps we will see some of them back at GE someday, as the next generation of materials scientists, chemists, and biologists!

I talked to Carl Vess, who helped develop Gemstone and is a chemical engineer at GE Global Research. He explained: “There is no way we would have been able to get to this moment without the contributions of everyone on the team. This material allows GE to significantly reduce the x-ray dose and increase the image resolution of a patient in the HDCT systems. This gives doctors more information to improve overall patient care.“

For full information on this awards, check out the Oct/Nov 2010 issue of the American Ceramic Society Bulletin.  If you are attending MS&T 2010 in Houston, check out the special lecture on the Gemstone scintillator given by Haochuan Jiang from GE Healthcare taking place today, Tuesday, Oct. 19^th at 2:00 p.m.

Bob is one of many researchers who have strong passions about cars, restoring vehicles, and electric vehicles.   Bob King, in Power Conversion Systems global technology organization has an all-electric personal car that he engineered himself,  a VW Rabbit.  Here is a piece from when he showed off his car to Make Magazine.  And Matt Nielsen, in Electronic Systems and Controls has blogged a bit about electric vehicles himself.  Pretty neat stuff!

Oil sands are a naturally occurring mixture of sand, water, and a form of petroleum called bitumen. They occur in many countries throughout the world, but Anthony is specifically working with our neighbors to the north in Alberta, Canada. Canada in particular has a large amount of oil sands and this project is leveraging some of our nanotechnology knowledge to tackle both the reduction of CO2 emissions and the treatment of the produced water that is generated during oil recovery from the oil sands. It is definitely a really interesting project and a neat example of some of the collaborations that happen at GE Global Research. We are partnering with both the University of Alberta and Alberta Innovates Technology Futures for the project; as well, the project is supported by the Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation.

Anthony will be blogging about this project in the future but for the time being you can read more on the project here.

In total, there were over 8,600 runners and walkers last Thursday evening, with temperatures nearing the high 80’s. The course started at the Empire State Plaza, taking us up the hill on Madison Avenue and into and around Washington Park, onto Western Avenue, and finally finishing with a much-appreciated downhill back down to the plaza. Special thanks goes out to Judy Guzzo and Aaron Knobloch (our team captains) for organizing the GE team!!!

Tiffany Westendorf and Katelyn Buress model our awesome dry-fit GE healthymagination t-shirts!!!

A small fraction of the GE team members at the plaza after the race!

“GE is exploring carbon fiber and ceramics from silicon carbide composites to permit higher temperature operation. Greg Corman of GE’s Advanced Ceramics Lab notes that the company is now evaluating the ceramics on a test turbine in its Lynn, Mass., facility, although these new materials may see application in jet engine turbines before power plants. “It’s 50-50 either way,” he says.”

- Scientific American

In March, the United States House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology’s Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight held a hearing on Rare Earth Minerals and 21^st Century Industry, in which GE’s own Steven Duclos (Chief Scientist and Manager of Materials Sustainability in Ceramic and Metallurgy Technologies) gave congressional testimony for GE.  The purpose of the hearing was to discuss the global supply of rare earth elements and their presence in many critical technologies – especially renewable energy technologies, such as wind turbines and hybrid electric vehicle batteries.

Steve discussed GE’s strategy on managing shortages of materials critical to manufacturing. Development of material technologies plays a critical role in developing solutions to these sustainability issues. In his testimony, Steve discussed the strategies that GE implements in reducing risk of elements deemed “high risk”:  improving the global supply chain, reduction of manufacturing waste, developing recycling technologies, redesigning the material to use less of the high risk element, or redesigning the entire system with another technology. He outlined one example for the last strategy, LEDs for lightning, which use 70x less rare earth elements than flourescent lighting.

A video of the hearing can be found here.  

Materials Advantage is the program for materials science and engineering students that gives student memberships in four professional societies: American Ceramic Society (ACerS), Association for Iron and Steel Technology (AIST), ASM International, and The Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society (TMS).

It was great to meet the next generation of materials scientists from RPI and to share with them my experience working in a corporate R&D lab!  Special thanks to Tricia Kent at RPI for organizing this event and Andy Detor, Martin Yan, and Nick Antolino for helping out with the tours at GE Global Research.

Check out this short video I took with Rich (and team members Steve Buresh and Ray Ropitzky) on the hot forging of a titanium billet at GE Global Research.

This video was prepared by GE Global Research under an award from NIST. The statements, findings, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NIST or the U.S. Department of Commerce.