Speaker 1: Deb Ehrenthal | Director, Social Science Research Institute
Infant mortality rates in the United States increase as counties become more rural. This mirrors the “rural mortality penalty” among adults, where those living in rural areas have higher mortality rates at every age than those in more urban settings. By analyzing linked and geocoded administrative data, we show that the higher infant mortality rates in rural counties are explained by higher rates of poverty and not by more-limited access to health care or high rates of tobacco use.
Speaker 2: Darren Pagan | Materials Science & Engineering
Understanding how structural materials, particularly metallic alloys, are processed and perform is one of the oldest scientific pursuits and over the past two thousand years, a tremendous amount of empirical knowledge has been developed regarding how we can make and use these materials. However, the understanding we have gained has all been gathered without the ability to ‘watch’ how these materials evolve as they are being processed and used in-service. Due to this short-coming, we still can’t precisely predict how a material will fail, leading to safety issues and economic waste. Similarly, our process of creating new alloy systems still requires a tremendous amount of old-fashioned trial-and-error. However, a new generation of X-ray techniques at synchrotrons and free electron lasers (particle accelerators) are allowing us to look inside these materials as they evolve in 3D. Combined with modern predictive modeling and machine-learning, we are on the precipice of revolutionizing how we use and design alloy systems.
The Millennium Café runs 10-11am in the 3rd floor Café Commons of the MSC Bldg. Join researchers from across campus for a stellar cup of coffee and two <10 min interdisciplinary talks. All Millennium Café events are free and open to the Penn State community, include coffee and breakfast pastries, and are held in the third floor Café Commons of the Millennium Science Complex at University Park.