Interview with a Material Science Professional (Glass Science)

Udaya Vempati is a Research Professional in Materials Science. He is currently working as a Research Scientist in Glass Science Division at Owens Illinois Inc in Perrysburg, Ohio, United States. Udaya was born in Ongole, Andhra Pradesh, India and never received any formal education in Materials Science in his early years. But he found himself lost in Materials Science and pushed him to apply for Ph.D in Materials Science. The following describes how Udaya pursued his passion in Glass Science, a subset of Materials Science.

- What is Materials Science?

Uday - Materials Science deals with the discovery and design of materials. Research in Materials Science generally involves studying synthesis, structure, properties and performance of materials. Materials can be anything from metals, ceramics, glasses, to polymers, biomaterials and more.

- What do you specialize in?

Uday - I specialize in glasses. When I say glass, the first thing that comes to mind are glass containers, window glass etc. But there are different types of glasses and I have dealt with chalcogenide glasses, metallic glasses and oxide glasses in my research.

- What are you currently working on?

Uday - I am currently working as a Research Scientist in Glass Science division within the Research & Development department at Owens Illinois Inc. (O-I). O-I is the world’s leading glass-packaging maker and makes billions of glass containers every year to serve a wide range of customers. My every day work at O-I involves design and execution of experiments that support, improve, and innovate the glass container manufacturing process.

- When and how did you first discover your passion for glass science?

Uday - When I was doing my Masters in Electronics & Computer Engineering, I became interested in the work of a professor on chalcogenide glasses. These glasses have many applications in electronics industry. They can be used in rewritable storage media such as DVDs or in fiber optics, for example. I did my Masters thesis on structure and properties of these glasses and just fell in love with glasses in general and glass science in particular.

Crystalline materials, such as aluminum, turn from solid state to liquid state at a sharply defined temperature known as their melting point (which for aluminum is at ~660C). But glasses slowly transform from a solid state to a liquid state upon heating. There is no clear demarcation in glasses, as in crystalline materials, of this phase transformation. When I first learned of this phenomenon, I was fascinated and knew I had to dig deep into glass science.

- How did you continue to pursue your passion in glass science?

Uday - I have realized during my Masters that there are outstanding problems/unanswered questions in glass science that I would be interested in exploring. I also found during my Masters that much of the research work on glass materials was taking place in Materials Science departments. These two factors motivated me to pursue a Ph.D. in Materials Science. I studied structure-property relationships of metallic glasses during my Ph.D and I used high-energy x-ray scattering as a characterization tool to relate peculiar mechanical behavior of these materials to their underlying microscopic structure.

- What challenges did you face in this career journey?

Uday - My undergraduate and Masters degrees (and coursework) were in Electrical & Computer Engineering. I did not have enough exposure to Materials Science (courses) until Ph.D. I had to quickly integrate myself into the Materials Science field during the first year of my Ph.D. and that posed a few challenges.

-How did you overcome these challenges?

Uday - I learned basics of Materials Science by taking numerous courses in the subject while doing my Ph.D.

- What advice and suggestions you have for young people?

Uday - I strongly urge young people to question how objects that they interact with everyday are made and how they work. For example, one could ask how are window glasses made? How are automobiles made? How are cellphones made? One can gain a tremendous amount of knowledge in several scientific fields, and Materials Science in particular, by just wondering about objects that they see and interact with every day.