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2021 MTI Scholarship Recipients

By MTI Admin posted 10-22-2021 10:30 AM

  
MTI 2021 SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENTS
WILLIAM AND MURDOCH RECALL DEDICATION AND EXPERIENCES HELPED LEAD TO AWARD
Get the full article from MTI CONNECT 2021, Issue 2.

Each year, the Materials Technology Institute offers two academic scholarships for students pursuing a career in the Process Industries, and each year it seems to become more challenging to select from the qualified applicants. MTI is pleased to announce that it has chosen two more outstanding students to award the 2021 Bert Krisher Memorial Scholarship. Camryn William, University of Alberta, and Owen Murdock, Ohio State University will each receive $5,000 toward academic expenses. Both students demonstrate a strong desire to enter the industry supported by academic achievements, work experience and enthusiasm for their chosen degrees.

Camryn William, University of Alberta
Camryn William’s interest in Materials Engineering began her freshman year while attending presentations on each discipline at her university, and she became fascinated by the materials engineering presentation. She quickly learned that everything is made of a material – the foundation for everything we use, which sparked her interest in the field.
She then went on to work for a corrosion company, Corrpro, in Calgary, Alberta during the summer of 2019.

“My mentor [at Corrpro] was a Materials engineer and he instilled in me inspiration to work towards a career in materials engineering. He showed me that materials engineering can be just as versatile as other forms of engineering,” William remarks.

Despite the tiring work of conducting corrosion tests on underground pipelines while walking 10 km a day during her 12-hour shifts, she continued to develop her passion for the industry.

The following summer she worked at Ram River Pipeline Outfitters, a company that specializes in Polyurethane Foam for pipeline and temperature insulation. While there, she spent her time testing the compatibility of polyurethane foam and cathodic protection by running pre-qualification trials.

“These two are not supposed to work together,” William explains. “But a test like this to check to see if there is a current on the pipeline has never been done before.”

Currently, she works at AltaSteel in the quality analysis department. They produce 350,000 tons of steel per year where she works on improving the quality of this steel through measuring carbon segregation in steel samples and conducts trials with various materials to improve safety around the plant. Her current trial is testing Diatomaceous Earth to replace rice husk, which is expected to reduce the amount of eye injuries.

William has worked diligently in gaining field experience, but with graduation on the horizon in 2023, she would like to add another co-op to her resume. She is particularly hoping to find an opportunity in failure analysis. Her fascination of working backwards on a problem and finding the reasons it failed are what led her to actively search for a co-op in this area during the May – December 2022 work term.

Another co-op and time for additional activities might not have been possible without the MTI scholarship, she indicates; however, William says she now has time to work on EDI (equity, diversity, and inclusion) initiatives.

“The scholarship money allows me to shift my focus from financial burden to finding more ways of helping the community,” she remarks. “For example, the Association for Engineers in Alberta (APEGA) 30 by 30 initiative aims at raising the rate of female engineers in the industry to 30 percent by 2030.”

She looks forward to having the ability to continue working with clubs and organizations to inspire young women about STEM.


Owen Murdoch, Ohio State University
Owen Murdoch has known about his love of engineering for as long as he can remember, but did not know exactly what he wanted to do in the field until his sophomore year of high school. He knew that deciding on what college to attend and choosing his major at a young age could lead to financial burdens down the road.

“I had no intention of falling into that ‘trap’ and decided I should first learn a skilled trade to gain some valuable life skills and work experience, as well as save money to self-fund
my college education for when I was certain about what I wanted to do,” he explains.

“At 16, I toured the Welding and Sheet Metal (WSM) fabrication program at my local career center, where I instantly fell in love with the program. I then enrolled in the two-year program starting my junior year.”

He later decided to attend The Ohio State University (OSU) and pursue a degree in welding engineering, which granted new opportunities through hands-on experience. His first learning experience came as a Welder/Fabricator at Capital Welding, where he was involved in both shop and field settings through the assembly, cutting, and welding of parts according to the bill of materials and blueprint specifications. This opportunity gave him insight into what it is like to be a welder and helped prepare him for his future work as an engineer.

Murdoch’s current job, his first position in the industry as an engineer, allows him to live and work in Aachen, Germany at Rheinisch-Westfalische Technische Hocschule Aachen (RWTH Aachen) by assisting a doctorate student with research through the DAAD RISE program. (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Research Internships in Science and Engineering is a competitive – less than 10 percent acceptance rate – program funded by the German government that is only available to students from the USA, UK, and Ireland.) They are working towards the development of a software that shows real-time simulation of the microstructure of a variety of metallic materials.

“The hands-on work I will be conducting to assist in this research is namely the conduction and/or evaluation of heat treatment, compression, and stress relaxation tests using a variety of testing machines,” he explains.

Through his work and studies, Murdoch has dedicated significant time and interest to the field of welding and engineering, which has paid off through his scholarships and awards.

“One of the most exciting moments of my career was when I was awarded my first scholarship last year,” he describes. “It means a lot to be recognized for your hard work through being awarded scholarships, such as this one from MTI.”

Murdoch says he has big plans ahead. He will pursue a master’s degree starting in August 2021 at the Technical University of Munich, where he will conduct laser welding
research in relation to battery cells and other automotive applications. Furthering his list of accolades, Murdoch says he also received a financial aid offer from the automotive
company BMW.

“BMW has offered to fund my senior capstone project with OSU, using my research as the basis of the project as well as my future master’s thesis,” remarks Murdoch.

Through the generosity of MTI and BMW, he will also be able to pursue his other passions.

“I enjoy learning Germanic languages, travelling and experiencing other cultures,” he concludes. “This is the reason I have studied Afrikaans, Dutch, and German; the latter of the two I will continue to study and hopefully become fluent in during my time in Germany.”

Congratulations to the 2021 MTI Bert Krisher Scholarship recipients. We wish you luck in your future endeavors!
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