by Bianca Rae S. Fabricante  

Dr. Pablo C. Carpio, a visiting expert from the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Valencia, Spain, gave a talk last October 26, 2018 at Room 130, CSM, MSU-IIT.

His talk involved an extensive discussion about the common materials used recently as thermal barrier coatings (TBC), deposition techniques of TBC and the characterization techniques commonly used in determining the effectivity of the TBC. TBCs are materials applied to metallic surfaces that play a critical role in the insulation process of a wide spectrum of components in various industries. TBC is widely used in an aircraft’s turbine engine combustion section since turbine components are generally made from metal alloys and TBCs enable the metal alloys to be functional at higher temperatures [1].

In another part of his talk, Dr. Carpio discussed the research opportunities in Europe under the Erasmus program for graduate students and faculty members. He specifically talked about Europe’s HORIZON 2020 which is the biggest research and innovation program with a total fund of nearly 80 billion euros available from 2014-2020. This program has four focus areas as follows:

(1) building low carbon, climate resilient future,

(2) connecting economic and environmental gains – circular economy,

(3) digitizing and transforming European industry and services, and

(4) boosting the effectiveness of the security union.

Interested applicants may visit this site: (https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/what-horizon-2020.

Dr. Carpio’s talk was attended by both the graduate students and faculty members of the Physics Department, College of Science and Mathematics, MSU-IIT.