A Missouri S&T student was recently awarded the 2024 Jean Bye – American Foundry Society (AFS) Women in Metalcasting national scholarship from the Foundry Educational Foundation. 
 
“I am grateful to receive validation from this scholarship that I’ve been doing important work with my research and outreach with S&T’s Robert V. Wolf Foundry,” says Katelyn Kiser, a Ph.D. student in materials science and engineering from Peoria, Illinois. “It can be easy to get swept away with the day-to-day and lose sight of the bigger impact you have the opportunity to make.” 
 
Kiser accepted the scholarship in late April at the 2024 AFS Metalcasting Congress in Milwaukee and also received the event’s 2024 Best Paper Award for the Steel Division. 
 
Her research at S&T has primarily focused on the hot tearing, or cracking, of steel as it is being cast. She examines how the structure of steel as it transforms from liquid to solid can influence the ways the tears form and how this issue can be better addressed. 
 
She says her path to studying metals may be different than many other students.  

“I’m probably the odd case out when it comes to becoming a metallurgist,” Kiser says. “My dad was a metallurgist, so I’ve grown up going to professional society meetings and helping my dad with materials demos since I was old enough to vaguely understand the topics. Then, in high school, I was convinced to attend the local materials camp.  
 
“After all of this, I thought: the one thing I absolutely won’t do is become a metallurgist — not because I didn’t enjoy everything I’d seen and learned, but more out of a sense of pride in wanting to make my own way in a different field.” 
 
But that feeling changed for Kiser in fall 2016 when she began her bachelor’s degree studies at Michigan Technological University. She planned to major in a different engineering field but quickly realized that she was most passionate about materials science — and more specifically, steel. 
 
That is what ultimately led to her beginning a Ph.D. program at Missouri S&T, which is home to the Kent D. Peaslee Steel Manufacturing Research Center. 
 
As the winner of the national scholarship, Kiser says she has noticed more and more interest from women in the materials science field, but there are fewer women specifically working with steel and in foundry environments. She says this is something she hopes to see improve. 
 
“I don’t think the issue is women not wanting to enter the field, but rather women not being exposed to the field and not truly understanding what the studies entail,” she says. “I think anyone, regardless of gender identity, should consider metallurgy as a potential field of study if they like learning by doing, physics, chemistry, math and even writing.” 
 
For more information about S&T’s materials science and engineering programs, visit mse.mst.edu. 

About Missouri S&T

Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,000 students located in Rolla, Missouri. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T offers over 100 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nation’s top public universities for salary impact, according to the Wall Street Journal. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit www.mst.edu.