Alumni Spotlight: Mingwei Zhang, Ph.D. '21
Mingwei Zhang, Ph.D. '21, now a postdoctoral scholar at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, used his time at UC Davis to grow his research career and plans to pay forward the generosity and mentorship he received from the materials science and engineering department.
His work at LBL extends the research he did at UC Davis. Under the mentorship of Professor Emeritus Jeff Gibeling, Zhang studied creep deformation in the Cantor alloy—a high-entropy alloy comprised of chromium, manganese, iron, cobalt and nickel in equal proportions. In materials science, creep occurs when materials permanently deform after being subjected to heat and stress for long periods of time, and it can lead to structural failures in materials systems under extreme conditions.
Being part of the Gibeling Lab meant Zhang was able to use the lab’s unique machinery to study creep deformation in a high-temperature, vacuum and true-stress controlled environment. This gave him a solid foundation in creep deformation while teaching him about the scope of research in materials systems that he hopes to continue exploring.