New faculty spotlight: Sarah Wolff

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Sarah Wolff

Eleven new faculty members start their careers in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the 2022-2023 academic year. One of these new faculty is Sarah Wolff, who will be an Assistant Professor beginning autumn semester 2022.

Wolff is from Evanston, Illinois, and credits her interest in engineering to her math and physics teachers in high school who discussed real-world, large-scale engineering challenges in the classroom.

Following her interest, Wolff attended nearby Northwestern University for all of her degrees. While she was a co-op student at General Electric Aviation, she became interested in manufacturing and 3D printing when they first started prototyping jet engine components and now specializes in design, materials and manufacturing.

Wolff has had previous teaching experience at Texas A&M University but is excited to be at Ohio State for the opportunities it allows her as well as being closer to family.

“As the land grant institution in Ohio, Ohio State is a hub for activity in manufacturing and materials development, presenting a rich environment of students, industry, facilities, and faculty who work together to advance manufacturing in the US,” she said.

Her research focuses on metal additive manufacturing and particularly in situ imaging, an investigatory technique where an optical or thermal camera is used to watch printing of the process in real time. She has used synchrotron (high-energy X-ray) imaging, or radiography, extensivity to see how parts melt and solidify on the order of microseconds.

“With this work, we can understand the fundamental mechanisms that occur during the printing process and print stronger alloys with tunable properties for a wide variety of applications, including aerospace, energy, and biomedical industries,” Wolff said.

Wolff’s research goal in the short term is to set up her lab, mentor students, and establish a network of collaborations as manufacturing has many interdisciplinary challenges, but in the long term, her overall research vision is to understand processing fundamentals to create new manufacturing processes and materials.

Her teaching goal is to engage students and spark interest in manufacturing. Like the research goal, teaching students not only entails the fundamentals of manufacturing, but also the new fields that intersect – such as data science and materials science.

In her new position, Wolff hopes to get to know the faculty, staff, and students and get tuned into the network of manufacturing research activity.

“This position is about serving students from all backgrounds in both teaching and mentoring,” she said. “I love sharing the enthusiasm for researching of the unknown and seeing how students grow to move science forward and make the unknown known. This position is also about constantly learning – from my students, colleagues, and from any new findings in the lab – which brings newness to each day.”

Categories: FacultySpotlights