Ashley is currently working for mentor Aaron Stebner, Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at the Colorado School of Mines. She graduated with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wyoming in August 2013 and is currently in her second year pursuing a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering with a thesis title “Quantifying the Multiscale Mechanics of Phase Transformation, Twinning, and Slip Using High Energy Diffraction Microscopy”.
While an undergraduate Ashley earned a spot on the President’s Honor Roll with a perfect 4.0 GPA and led a team of mechanical and electrical engineers in the design and construction of a prototype sponsored by the US Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity. She was a recipient of a Wyoming NASA Space Grant Fall Senior Design Fellowship and was the Winner of Best Engineering on Undergraduate Research Day. Her work involved nanoindentation testing on polymers in order to identify and classify indentation size effects on the submicron scale. This project was funded by three Wyoming NSF EPSCoR Undergraduate Research Fellowships.
In Stebner’s “Multiscale Mechanics and Materials Laboratory” Ashley is working to develop a forward-model data analysis technique for far-field High Energy Diffraction Microscopy (ff-HEDM) data sets. This technique will be used to monitor deformation mechanisms (i.e., phase transformation, twinning, and slip) through the thickness of a gage section on the sub-grain scale, in-situ, and without destroying the sample. CHESS is proud to be able to provide experimental validation on this project, and wishes Ashley continued success.