University of Arizona · since 2021

Understanding the mesoscale of imperfect materials that carry the load

Materials informatics has mastered atomistic discovery, but an alloy is not its unit cell. Strength, fatigue, and damage are decided at the mesoscale of grains, phases, and defects. We measure, model and design the mesoscale, especially when composition is not free to choose.

Lattice rotation fields from a slip band

Fig. Lattice rotation fields from a slip band in a superalloy simulated with CPFEM.

NSF CAREER 2025 / LANL ISTI Distinguished Faculty Scholar 2024 / MIT DMSE Visiting Scholar 2023 / Associate Editor, Metall. Mater. Trans. A / TMS AIM-2026 Programming Chair

Featured research

Plasticity

Plasticity Across Populations

Fatigue indicator parameters that generalize to grain populations far beyond their training set.

FIP-GNN · Scripta Materialia 2025

Characterization

Differentiable Characterization

Microscopy as continuous differentiable fields beyond the measurement grid.

Neural EBSD · arXiv 2026

Constraint

Circular Materials

Achieving wrought alloy performance in recycled aluminum alloys.

NSF CAREER 2025–2030

Selected papers

All publications →
16 Jul 2026

Sheila successfully defends a PhD in Applied Mathematics. Congratulations! 🎉

03 Jul 2026

I-Tzu gives an invited seminar at National Institute of Materials Science.

09 Jun 2026

A new preprint on neural representation of EBSD is now arXiv!

08 Jun 2026

A new preprint on latent representation and its use for microstructure analysis is now on arXiv!