Sean Mills

Sean Mills is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Lehigh University. Prior to joining the Lehigh community on August 1, 2025, Sean worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, and is an affiliate of the National Center for Electron Microscopy (NCEM), within the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is focused on using high resolution electron microscopy techniques to characterize structural metal alloys that can withstand harsh operating conditions. As a collaborator in the Fundamental Understanding of Transport Under Reactor Extremes (FUTURE), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, he investigates structural materials that are exposed to coupled extremes such as irradiation, high temperature, and corrosion. He obtained his Ph.D. in Materials Science at the Colorado School of Mines on the interplay of rolling contact fatigue, microstructural degradation, and alloy optimization in aerospace-grade Ni-Ti-Hf alloys.