Dr. Deep Choudhuri, a New Mexico Tech Materials Engineering assistant professor, has received an award from American Chemical Society’s Petroleum Research Fund for his work with negative thermal expansion behavior in certain materials.

The grant, $125,000 over two years, is part of ACS’s New Directions Grants Program that aims to provides funds to scientists and engineers with limited—or even no—preliminary results for a research project they wish to pursue, and who intend to use the PRF-driven preliminary results to seek continued funding from other agencies.

Dr. Choudhuri’s research will look at the negative thermal expansion behavior in novel metal- organic framework and ceramic materials. This work will use quantum mechanics-based computational techniques to discern atomic structures responsible for showing this behavior. Such fundamental insights will permit the design of a new category of functional materials for a diverse range of engineering applications, e.g., structural coatings, low-temperature space applications.

Choudhuri earned his PhD in materials science and engineering from Michigan State University (2009). He received a bachelor’s in technology from Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, India. His research interests focus on crystallization, phase transformations, dislocation plasticity; metallic alloys, hybrid inorganic-organic materials as well as modelling and simulation.

About American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund
The goals of the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund are to support fundamental research in the petroleum field, and to develop the next generation of engineers and scientists through support of advanced scientific education.

About New Mexico Tech

New Mexico Tech, also known as New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, is a STEM-
focused university in centrally located Socorro, New Mexico. Ranking high in the regional and
national standings, this community of scholars and educators is dedicated to research,
innovation and education that will meet the challenges of today and tomorrow. NMT is
recognized as a “Hispanic-serving institution” (HSI), with more than 40 percent of its students
identifying as Hispanic. New Mexico Tech is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission as a
doctoral degree-granting university.

All media inquiries, please contact Jay Ann Cox, Communications Specialist, 575-835-5260, jay.cox@nmt.edu.