A day in the life of… a Materials Research Engineer

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TCT's 'A Day in the Life of...' series has been primarily launched for college and university alumni to better understand what career opportunities in additive manufacturing (AM) are available to them. Throughout the series, TCT will spend time with a host of AM professionals to communicate what their day-to-day tasks are, what kinds of teams they work within, what they have learnt on the job, and how they got to where they are today. In this instalment, Callie Higgins, of the Applied Chemicals and Materials Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), explains the role of a Materials Research Engineer and Co-Project Leader. 

After spending years working independently inside a laboratory, her head otherwise buried in scientific journals and research papers, Callie Higgins was ready for a change of scenery.

The idea, at that moment, of pursuing a career in research was not an appealing prospect. There was a world of opportunity out there, and she was keen to explore it.

Higgins explains this dilemma six years into her role as a Materials Research Engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a national laboratory funded by the US Government to serve US commerce. It is the kind of role that, upon completion of her PhD, didn’t interest her – but has become the role of hear dreams and one she wouldn’t have without that qualification, nor the connections she made along the way.

Having come through the several taxing years it takes to obtain a doctorate, it is normal to feel proud yet exhausted, relieved but uncertain. Higgins was no different, but, due to a chance collaboration and writing a postdoctoral fellowship proposal on a whim, she couldn’t be more grateful she took a chance on research again. 

Q. What have you learned by working this job?

CH: I can be successful in a very non-traditional way. In a very conventional, linear career-growth environment like NIST, as long as I continue to pursue my passions and follow my gut, I can carve out a new path to success. This was particularly exciting because it underscored how important perspective is when we’re told there is only one road to success. 

A TYPICAL DAY

Higgins has two types of days, one packed with meetings and one with the space and time to action her research. Each start with a routine email check, but such is Higgins’ ‘you only touch things once’ mindset, Higgins’ cursor is never too far away from that particular tab.

By virtue of our conversation, Callie is at the start of a day which will feature more meetings than practical work. Through her role as Co-Project Leader for Photopolymer Additive Manufacturing at NIST, Higgins is frequently pulled into additive manufacturing leadership meetings to update peers and seniors on the progress being made, while she also participates in basic project planning meetings and meetings with stakeholders or collaborators.

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When she’s not in back-to-back meetings, Higgins gets to dive into the other things on her agenda. While NIST and Higgins do tackle fundamental science questions in their research activities, there is a directive to focus on affecting industry by working with private sector partners to accelerate research and development, or through the development of standards.

“If our stakeholders (i.e., all of US commerce) do not find our work useful, why are we doing it?” Higgins explains. “We collaborate with industry, academic, and government agency partners to understand what kind of standards and fundamental science is needed to ensure additive manufacturing is a useful technology in industry.”

Standards, Higgins concedes, isn’t on the face of it the sexiest of application spaces, but as most engineers come to learn throughout their careers, they are among the most important. But, she argues, they can be structured such that they have ‘unbelievable impact’, helping to establish, in this case, additive manufacturing as the transformative technology many hope it can become.

To this end, Higgins works closely with her co-project leader Jason Killgore – “a brilliant scientist and a brilliant leader” – who adds a strong research background to Higgins’ application-space background. Currently, Higgins reports to Killgore as her Interim Group Leader, with each project in the organisation living in a group that lives in a division that lives in one of five NIST laboratories. Higgins is also responsible for organising all of the additive manufacturing efforts across their laboratory, and as such has regular points of contact with, for example, to create a cohesive vision across the lab to support these efforts.

She does, however, find time to provide her contributions to said research – backed up by a Google Scholar profile which logs the various research projects she can put her name to. In recent years, Higgins has been involved with research efforts around the microscale photopatterning of through-thickness modulus in a monolithic and functionally graded 3D printed part, as well as in-situ, nanoscale characterisations of printing processes and light engine uniformity characterisations.

In this latter project, Higgins and her colleagues had determined that the characterisation of light engines used in liquid crystal display (LCD) based Vat Photopolymer 3D printing systems was lacking. Through their research, they mapped the irradiance, spectral characteristics and optical divergence of a 405 nm LCD-based light engine, and found notable variation across each property, causing changes to polymerisation and surface texture. It is work like this – delving into the details of additive manufacturing processes to address the issues of a still-developing process – that Higgins hopes will allow the AM industry to progress. That eight other researchers are named as co-authors speaks also to the collaborative nature of her role.

Q. If you could give your younger self some career advice, what would it be?

CH: Stop worrying so much about what your superiors think. Give yourself the grace to just be exactly who you are, and try to not read into  the actions of others, with their own life experiences colouring their view of the world. Be kind, follow your passions, and, I assure you, it will all work out in the end.

THE ROLE BEYOND THE TITLE

When Higgins had completed her PhD and was turned off at the prospect of immersing herself once again in the field of research, one of her main concerns was her perception of what a career in research had to involve. At NIST, however, she found she could still have the impact on society she was looking for.

“Because NIST’s mission is to serve commerce, we’re charged with interacting with industry all the time,” she says. “That’s very different than what I had come to believe of a research position because, often, it’s fundamental, isolating research, which is lovely, but I like when I can see where my research is going to be applied. I love that not only are we charged with the development of metrology tools to bolster fields, but also that our work is mandated to have direct translation into commerce by our mission.”

In her role, Higgins is of course confronted with fundamental elements of research, from resin formulation to post-processing, but then gets to progress the research from there, wading into the territory of standardising processes and workflows.  One aspect of her role that she loves is when a colleague approaches her with an interesting question and, because she does not typically have short-term deadlines, she’s able to drop everything and dive into the question at hand. It’s in these moments where the researchers are glad to be mostly lab-based, sharing knowledge in a collaborative way through spontaneous interactions deep inside a laboratory.

Q. What is the best thing about your job?

CH: The ability to interact with so many brilliant people, from industry professionals to scientists. The  wealth of intellect we have access to is, for me, unprecedented.

Another big part of what Higgins does at NIST is communicating the outcomes of these projects through workshop reports, peer-reviewed journals, conference presentations, and interviews. She is, in a way, targeted on this output at the start of the fiscal year, and will then spend the convening months working to spread the word and share the knowledge that has been developed inside NIST’s laboratories.

“I do a lot of stakeholder outreach,” Higgins says. “I'm making sure that people understand what NIST does, and why it adds value, while giving our stakeholders the opportunity to come to us with questions and ideas. As the main mechanism for NIST’s work to be impactful is for industry to see what we’re doing, supply feedback to us, and for us, in turn, to respond to their needs as best we can.”

It is also one of her go-to tasks when she is lucky enough to have a few minutes to spare. In these instances, Higgins will sometimes look to spend extra time in the lab, but she has realized her greatest impact lies in engaging with the wider additive manufacturing community. This could be to inform the industry of what progress is being made on a certain project, or it could be to procure some assistance on a project still running.

“One challenge to being at NIST is, because we are federally funded and thus cannot compete for most grants, it’s difficult to grow any single project, however promising it may be. We leverage external collaborations to bring on more people and expertise to provide the bandwidth to pursue a few more of the exciting research questions we’re posed with regularly.”

Perhaps the biggest external collaboration Higgins has helped to establish is the Photopolymer Additive Manufacturing Alliance (PAMA) in collaboration with RadTech. So far, PAMA has served as a way to bring together those working with photopolymer AM, whether it be in research or industry, to have open and honest discussions about the technology. Regular meetings are held to facilitate this conversation, webinars and workshops have been organised too, and there’s the prospect further down the line for research to be funded by the Alliance.

Q. Why should people want to work in this space?

CH: I don’t know if there is a field that could have – aside from AI – such a potentially transformative impact. AM is creating entirely new industries and because of this potential breadth of impact, it is a field that I couldn’t dream of leaving.

THE PATHWAY

Getting to the position Higgins is in is no mean feat. The PhD is a prerequisite for her Materials Research Engineer position at NIST, and that not only means you require a certain amount of skill and expertise, but also perseverance, dedication, and the ability to follow through.

Higgins successfully defended her PhD in 2017, rounding out five years of intense research, in-depth writing, and finally a presentation to communicate the findings to a set of examiners.

As she approached the finish line, Higgins required some atomic force microscopy expertise to carry out additional measurements on the materials she was studying. It was Killgore at NIST she would reach out to, and that would represent their first collaborative effort. Though NIST provided sufficient support and Higgins enjoyed working with Killgore and his team, she still found herself leaning toward a role in industry. A couple of different private sector jobs had been lined up by Higgins, but then she was encouraged to apply for a received an NRC postdoctoral associateship, which would allow her access to a host of different laboratories across the US, while also letting her defer her industry positions for two years.

Recognising the opportunity in front of her, Higgins submitted a proposal, which received a high enough rating that NIST would fully fund her postdoctoral work. 

“I fell in love with it,” Higgins says of her postdoctoral research at NIST. “It was a completely different experience than my doctoral work. It was peer-to-peer, expert-to-expert discussions as opposed to the hierarchical mechanism that is the nature of a PhD. It was also really enjoyable to be able to and encouraged to interact with industry. I didn’t have to solely sit in a dark lab by myself, I could live in this interesting interplay. NIST is this nebulous third-party that gets to help industry but isn’t competing with them. It’s shocking how much more honest and open people are about their challenges because of this, which allows us to help solve them more easily.”

Aside from the PhD, to work in a research role in an organisation that serves to bridge the gap between research and industry, Higgins says you need to be a hungry scientist. You have to have a deep understanding of your field, but you also have to have deep questions, a desire to solve problems, and a perseverance to try again and again when your ideas aren't coming off. At an organisation like NIST, and in fact, any workplace, Higgins notes that you have to find a way to make yourself invaluable too. There are many ways to do it – you can work hard to become an expert in your niche, or you can add value somewhere the organisation is lacking, but those newly entering the workplace need to make sure they’re adding so much value that the organisation or institute they're working for can’t let them go.

In addition to all that, Higgins recommends developing an inner belief in your abilities and a trust that you know the best path for yourself.

“You will be told that you need to do XYZ to be successful, or people will set expectations for you on how to be successful, but you can pave your own way. You 100% can make your own path, and follow your own passions, and you will be successful,” Higgins says. “That’s the biggest thing I’ve learned. It requires you seeking out the right mentorship and the right leadership and supervisors. If it requires you to move to a different group to get the support that you need, you can do that. I highly encourage people to think outside of the box if they feel they’re not pursuing their passions but feel like they could if they had some degree of freedom.”

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