MechE Associate Professor Natasha Vermaak has completed her leadership term as the Chair of the Computational Materials Science and Engineering (CMSE) technical committee (2022-2024) within The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS). TMS is a professional society that connects over 10,000 minerals, metals, and materials scientists and engineers on six continents.
The TMS Computational Materials Science and Engineering technical committee (CMSE) fosters “research and development associated with the mathematical and computational determination of the physical and engineering properties of materials, the depiction of material microstructure, and its evolution associated with those properties." This includes topics such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Informatics, Computational Model Development, Model Verification & Validation, and Uncertainty Quantification, Algorithm Development in Materials Science and Engineering, and the Computational Discovery and Design of Materials. Vermaak was honored previously by TMS in relation to her computational materials design work through the inaugural 2020 Frontiers of Materials Award.
Vermaak succeeded Dr. Francesca Tavazza (NIST) who stepped down as CMSE Chair in March 2022 and she passed the gavel to the new chair Prof. Ashley Spear (University of Utah) in March 2024. This was also the first succession of three consecutive female chairs for the committee. The CMSE committee currently has over 90 members spanning graduate students to senior career professionals hailing from academia, national laboratories, government, industry and other sectors.
When asked about her experience, Vermaak replied:
“Chairing CMSE at TMS the past two years and being Vice-Chair the two years before that has been an incredibly rewarding professional and personal experience; it has been a pleasure to work with the dedicated volunteers and staff that TMS inspires. During my leadership tenure, I tried to focus on inclusivity. For me this meant emphasizing clarity and operational transparency in my communications with the committee, encouraging considerations of diversity and accessibility in all committee activities, finding ways to celebrate and elevate the accomplishments of our members, and creating new mentorship opportunities for our most junior members. For example, I’m proud that the CMSE committee was able to support the establishment of the upcoming honorary symposia for both Dr. Diana Farkas and Dr. Anthony Rollett at TMS 2025 (with lead organizers A. M. Hodge of USC and J.A. Zimmerman of Sandia National Laboratories, respectively). Note that Dr. Farkas’ symposium is also one of the first ever honorary symposia for a woman at a TMS Spring Meeting.
And, together with the new CMSE Chair Ashley Spear, I initiated the first student-led technical symposium at TMS. We were able to recruit an incredible team of graduate students who were motivated to learn about what goes into technical programming at TMS and turn their ideas into reality! Over a two year process, and led by the now Dr. Katelyn Jones (CMU), Dr. Yasir Mahmood (Clemson Univ.), and R. Daniel Moore (Lehigh Univ.), we eagerly await the culmination symposium “Looking Outside Materials Science: Lessons Learned for and from Materials Discovery - A Student-Led Symposium” at TMS 2025. This symposium will spotlight the exchange of tools between materials science and a set of diverse and sometimes unlikely partners or industries. For example, some of the invited speakers will highlight how researchers are bringing ultrafast optics to metallurgy or how synchrotron x-ray imaging tools might help minimize back pain.”
Follow the links to find out more about TMS and volunteer opportunities, or to sign up to be a part of the new TMS-wide mentoring program.
