Decarbonizing Metallurgy from Extraction to 3D Printing
Dr. Leora Dresselhaus-Marais, Stanford University
VIDEO RECORDING COMING SOON - Release Date 01/12/2026
Abstract:
Metals are critical to technology, but their supply chain includes antiquated techniques with large carbon emissions. A sustainable economy requires new science to connect science to engineering needs across the supply chain – from metal extraction to part fabrication. My group uses and develops advanced characterization techniques to study the science underlying barriers to decarbonize today’s technology. In this talk, I will introduce our work at the earliest and latest parts of the supply chain. I will begin my talk explaining our work studying approaches for sustainable metals extraction, including approaches to develop and scale technologies to decarbonize steelmaking and approaches to create new extraction methods for rare earth elements. I will then turn to the critical challenges of making efficient parts to reduce the energy of vehicles and machines. Metal 3D printing is revolutionizing technology, as its layer-by-layer fabrication that can fabricate parts with strength-to-weight ratios not possible otherwise. However, the defects and structural properties from printed parts are highly variable due to the poorly understood evolution of defects at many scales. I will share my group’s work developing models to understand defects of a few types during metal 3D printing, enabled by synchrotron and new XFEL techniques we developed to directly measure those dynamics in real time. This view of science across the supply chain illustrates the important science opportunities for metallurgy to offer unique insights for a sustainable future.
About Dr. Leora Dresselhaus-Marais
Dr. Leora Dresselhaus-Marais started as an Assistant Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University in September 2021, with a courtesy appointment in Mechanical Engineering and a term appointment in Photon Science at the SLAC National Accelerator Lab. Leora’s work focuses on using modern X-ray and optical tools to establish the fundamental science underlying sustainable metals manufacturing – from metals extraction to metal 3D printing and structure-property relations of the components. Leora was recently awarded the Sidhu Award by the Pittsburgh Diffraction Society and was a LCLS Young Investigator Award finalist in 2024. She was awarded a DOE Early Career Award and a Young Investigator Prize from AFOSR in 2023. Prior to her time at Stanford, she was a Lawrence Fellow at LLNL, a PhD student at MIT, and a BA/MA student at the University of Pennsylvania.
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