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Ami Ahure Powell (Fed)

Mechanical Engineer

Dr. Louise Ami Ahure Powell specializes in understanding failure mechanisms in composite materials to improve their designed lifetime for infrastructure, aerospace, and automotive applications. Dr. Ahure Powell is currently a Mechanical Engineer, who measures the strength at the embedded interphase in composites and utilizes advanced optical imaging techniques (e.g., fluorescence microscopy) combined with advanced experimental methods in solid mechanics (e.g., digital image correlation for strain mapping) to characterize damage in composite materials. Dr. Ahure Powell received a Bachelor of Science (2006), a Master of Science (2009), and a Ph.D. (2014) in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland (UMD), College Park. Her Ph.D. dissertation was on magnetorheological fluids and applications to adaptive landing gear for a lightweight helicopter (funded by the Boeing Company and the U.S. Army Aviation Applied Technology Directorate). She is a Vertical Flight Foundation (VFF) Scholar (2009) and has received other graduate awards and honors (as a student). Dr. Ahure Powell is very involved in professional societies. She is an active member of the NIST Association for Black Staff (NABS), a Voting Director for the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering (SAMPE) Baltimore/Washington chapter, and a returning alumna (focused on technical and professional development) in the Women in Aeronautics and Astronautics (WIAA) chapter at the University of Maryland (UMD).

Awards

NIST NRC Postdoctoral Fellowship (2018) centrally funded

Vertical Flight Foundation Scholarship (VFF) Hal Andrews Scholarship, 2009

Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering (SAMPE) University Research Symposium 1st Place Winner, 2009

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Mid-Atlantic Regional 1st Place Research Award Recipient, 2009

Publications

An autonomous design algorithm to experimentally realize three-dimensionally isotropic auxetic network structures without compromising density

Author(s)
Meng Shen, Marcos Reyes-Martinez, Ami Ahure Powell, Mark Iadicola, Abhishek Sharma, Fabian Byléhn, Nidhi Pashine, Edwin P. Chan, Christopher Soles, Heinrich Jaeger, Juan de Pablo
Auxetic materials have a negative Poisson's ratio and are of significant interest in applications that include impact mitigation, membrane separations and
Created July 30, 2019, Updated October 26, 2023