Professor Jessica Krogstad has been selected to receive the 2021 Engineering Ceramics Division (ECD) Jubilee Global Diversity Award. This honor recognizes exceptional early- to mid-career women and minority professionals in the area of ceramic science and engineering who have made contributions to the field and have demonstrated commitment to mentoring students and young professionals.

“The ACerS ECD Jubilee Diversity Award is relatively new, and I am honored to be recognized alongside past recipients--distinguished early career scientists and engineers working in the field of ceramics,” said Krogstad. “The visibility of this award is an exciting acknowledgement of our contributions to the field but also an important recognition by the society of the importance of diverse perspectives and backgrounds to the growth and stability of our community. 

“Our most recent efforts include a collaboration with scientists at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.  This collaboration is led by my student Nate Olson and aims to improve the thermal stability and durability of zirconia-based aerogels,” Krogstad said.

Aerogels are highly porous materials that make great thermal insulators, but when they’re used at the high temperatures experienced during re-entry events, and other applications, they have a tendency to densify, which reduces the porosity and their ability to protect systems/components, etc from the high temperatures.  Prof. Krogstad’s group also has a relatively new collaboration with Prof. John Abelson (MatSE) and UES, Inc, which is a company in Dayton, OH.  This effort aims to improve the oxidation resistance and durability of protective HfB2-based coatings.  These two projects are complemented by on-going efforts to explore the radiation tolerance of porous ceramics (supported by a DOE Early Career Award) and to understand collected deformation mechanisms in ferroelastic ceramics (supported by an NSF CAREER award).

“In addition to regular mentoring efforts with my graduate and undergraduate students, I always love to talk about our outreach camps,” Krogstad said. “The high school summer camp, formally known as GLAM, is now called GEMS: Gender Equity in Materials Science. This summer was a little bit different, but with some really great leadership from our graduate student coordinators, Emiliana Cofell, Blanka Janicek, Nurila Kambar and Alex Spitzer, we were able to convert some of our modules into an online format. Either way, I love these summer camps—they’re great exposure to science and engineering for our campers, and we have several GLAM/GEMS alumni in our department now! I’ve also organized several events within ACerS and TMS, that emphasize the importance of diversity within MatSE as a field." These include the Inaugural Women in Ceramics Luncheon at last year's ICACC20 meeting in Daytona Beach, FL and speaking at the ACerS Winter Workshop on “The Value of Being Yourself: How embracing diversity can benefit creativity, productivity and culture in the scientific community."

Professor Krogstad will deliver an invited lecture at the 45th International Conference on Advanced Ceramics and Composites (ICACC). She is one of three Award Winners who will be giving their presentations at the beginning of the Special Focused Session on Diversity, Entrepreneurship, and Commercialization. Her lecture will be titled "Dynamic, radiation tolerant ceramics: Understanding defect mobility and microstructural evolution in ceramics subject to ion irradiation."