Seminars
Upcoming Seminars
Stay tune!
Past Seminars
From Lab to Production: Multi-Pixel Terahertz Imaging for Industrial NDE
January 14, 2026 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Nezih Tolga Yardimci
Terahertz radiation interacts strongly with many materials, including polymers, composites, battery electrodes, ceramics, and semiconductors, making it a promising tool for nondestructive evaluation. Yet conventional terahertz pulse imaging systems rely on single-pixel, point-scanning detectors that are too slow and insufficiently sensitive for real industrial environments. Their limited throughput and incompatibility with fast manufacturing lines have kept THz imaging confined to laboratory use.
Rethinking Timber: Post-Tensioned Buildings from Concept to Construction
December 03, 2025 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Alessandro Palermo
Prestressing technology in concrete structures has a rich history of almost 100 years, but it is only in the past two decades that innovative engineers have applied post-tensioning and pre-tensioning techniques to timber construction. This evolution includes the use of these techniques in timber floors, walls, and lateral load systems. PRES-LAM technology, involving post-tensioned rocking walls and frames enhanced with external dissipative devices, emerged in the early 2000s, showcasing a new path for resilient timber construction.
Advancing Ultrasonic Damage Imaging and Property Inversion for Next-Generation Structural Health Monitoring
November 19, 2025 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Chengyang Huang
Ultrasonic testing is a cornerstone of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), providing a powerful non-invasive approach for assessing defects and material properties in aerospace, maritime, and civil infrastructure. Nevertheless, conventional ultrasonic inspection methods face significant challenges when applied to realistic engineering structures such as railway tracks and composite materials.
AI/ML Application in Railway Inspection Systems
November 12, 2025 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Anish Poudel
The U.S. rail network—spanning nearly 140,000 miles of privately owned track and supporting both freight and passenger services—has been central to the nation’s economy for over 150 years. Traditionally, rail inspections have relied on manual, visual assessments using handheld tools, which can be inconsistent, prone to human error, and difficult to digitize or analyze for predictive maintenance.
Model Fidelity, Accuracy and Computational Cost Trade-offs in Composite Bolted Joint Bearing Failure Response Prediction Models
November 05, 2025 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Satchi Venkataraman
Bearing failure prediction of bolted joints in composites is complicated due to the interactions of contact, geometric, and material nonlinearity, as well as multimodal and multiscale nature of damage and failure of CFRP materials. Hybrid composite fiber metal laminates (FML), that include metal foils along with carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) plies, exhibit increased laminate bearing strength. In FML, the ductility of the added metal layers further complicates this, requiring changes to models previously developed for bearing failure of CFRP bolted joints.
Science and Technology on a Mission: An Overview of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and The Nondestructive Characterization Institute
October 29, 2025 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Harry E. Martz, Jr.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), as part of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) network of 17 national laboratories, advances science and technology in support of the DOE’s core mission. LLNL’s “Science on a Mission” approach drives innovation across national security, energy, and fundamental research. The Nondestructive Characterization Institute (NCI) at LLNL exemplifies this mission by researching, developing and applying advanced nondestructive characterization (NDC) techniques.
Roles of High-Tech Fab Engineering in Semiconductor Chips Manufacturing
October 27, 2025 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Luh-Maan Chang
High-Tech continuously brings forth improved technology, knowledge, economy, and quality of human life. To advance high-tech, facility is a part of and prerequisite to the manufacturing & R&D. In a semiconductor chip fabrication plant (fab,) high performance manufacturing tools, precision instruments and ultrapure utilities are needed for semiconductor chips manufacturing. Its processes must be performed in a stringently controlled environment for mitigating the vibration and contamination.
An Engineer, a Researcher, and an Inspector walk into a bar: How will each solve a difficult NDT problem
October 22, 2025 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Shant Kenderian
What is an NDT Engineer? How is his/her job different from that of a scientist or the expertise of an advanced NDT inspector? Three case studies will be discussed to show the difference between research, inspection and engineering. Where will the three practitioners overlap and what gaps exist between them. These roles can be demonstrated through a number of difficult case-studies taken from the space program, showing where each practitioner can contribute.
Reducing Our Communities' Seismic Risk
October 15, 2025 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Daniel Zepeda
Southern California will be hit by a major earthquake that will damage buildings and severely affect our communities. It is truly just a question of when and not if. Until that big earthquake hits, the time is now to better understand and then address the potential vulnerabilities hidden throughout our communities. Come and learn why there are seismic risk reduction mandates in California requiring the evaluation and retrofit of at-risk buildings in our communities.
Yes, You Can Design and Can Build it, but Will it Fly (Safely)? Present and Future Quality Assurance Methods for Aerospace Structures
October 08, 2025 - 12:00 pm
Speaker: Gary Georgeson
In the aerospace industry, any structure that an engineer designs or builds must be validated for quality and performance using an approach called Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE), which can be used during the structure's development, fabrication or in-service usage. This present talk will introduce state-of-the-art NDE methods within the field of aerospace and describe some of the biggest challenges the industry faces going into the future. Several interesting examples of NDE research and development currently being done to face those challenges will also be provided.