SOCORRO, N.M. – Grad student Frank Austin Mier is the first NMT student to receive a teaching grant from ASME.

Mier will use the $5,000 grant to support his teaching assignment for ES 216: Fluid Mechanics. He said he is excited to get the grant because he hopes to enter academia after finishing his doctorate.

Department chair Dr. Andrei Zagrai said this grant is just one way they are leveraging outside resources to support grad students.

Mier is currently a Ph.D. student in the Mechanical Engineering Department. He earned his bachelor’s at NMT in 2016 and his master’s in 2018 with an emphasis in explosives.

“I’ve been fortunate to have jobs teaching at a community college in the Bay Area,” Mier said. “It’s a ton of fun and really rewarding. There’s something about teaching that never gets old.”

His first foray into teaching was during the summer after his sophomore year at NMT. He returned home to Redwood City, Calif., where he found a job teaching at Cañada Community College.

“My mom is a preschool teacher, so that environment – having an educator as a parent – steers you in that direction,” he said.

Mier said he feels comfortable teaching. He is familiar with the department faculty quite well, so he expects to get plenty of support from his advisor Dr. Michael Hargather and other professors.

“Austin has done an amazing job as a PhD Candidate,” Hargather said. “His research is outstanding. He has published four papers, and now he is having the opportunity to teach.  All of this sets him up for great success as a future faculty member. 

“This ASME Fellowship is a great opportunity for him and will be great for our students to learn from Austin,” Hargather said.

Mier will continue his dissertation work while teaching. His project involves describing the fluid dynamics of lithium ion batteries during failure incidents.

“It’s an exciting project,” Mier said. “We are looking at what happens to a battery before failure and during failure. It’s very reminiscent of explosives. With explosives, you know generally when it’ll detonate. But with a battery, you don’t know exactly when or exactly how it’ll fail.”

– NMT –