Getting to know Qingyou Han

A faculty member in the Department of Mechanical Engineering Technology since 2007, Qingyou Han came to Purdue from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. He earned his doctorate in materials science from Oxford University and his master’s degree in metallurgy from Beijing University of Science and Technology. He completed his undergraduate work at Wuhan Institute of Technology in China. Recently named one of this year’s Outstanding Tenured Faculty members in the College of Technology, Han speaks proudly about the accomplishments of his students. He advises the American Foundry Society chapter at Purdue.

On coming to Purdue: I was tired of traveling too much. I was in charge of large projects and finding funding for those projects. I had to bring in $1 million a year, working with industrial organizations. I spent 80-90 nights a year away from home. I thought I would try working at a university. I’m good at doing research. I’m not so good at writing proposals.

On teaching and his students: I teach Advanced Materials (MET 346) every semester. I also teach MET535 Advanced Casting Design. I also do independent study with undergraduates and graduate students. There’s a lot of work supervising students, writing journal articles. I taught at the University of Science and Technology in Beijing from 1985 to 1991. But that was in Chinese. Teaching in English was quite difficult for me. Chinese was easy. I am advisor of the American Foundry Society (AFS) at Purdue and am the FEF  [Foundry Educational Foundation] Key professor for our department. FEF gives us money for scholarships for our student members. And our students compete for national AFS scholarships as well. Our students participate in a student technology contest during the International Metalcasting Congress. This is the third year. One student placed second last year, and we had one honorable mention for the past two years. They had their papers published in the International Journal of Metalcasting.

On his study abroad course “Manufacturing in China”: It was a new class in 2010. Most of our students are local and have never been out of Indiana or the U.S. They don’t really understand what happens internationally or globally. When they graduate, they will work with people from foreign countries. On this trip, they find out what others are doing in this area. They need to understand different cultures, manufacturing outside of the U.S., so they can compare. They get more information and knowledge. And, they’ll get to know who they are competing with, right?

On his research: Hypercast is a project for the North American Die Casting Association and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. I am one of the Purdue PIs and I work with professors from materials engineering. The goal is to use sub micron-sized ceramic particles to improve properties of lightweight alloys using the most efficient diecasting method. Five universities are involved with research: Ohio State University, Colorado School of Mines, Case Western Reserve, Worcester Polytechnic, and Purdue. My research background is in controlling microstructure formation. Now I am interested in industrial technology and ways that material processing technologies can be improved using high intensity ultrasonic vibration. This has many applications – in metalcasting, aluminum and automotive industries.

Outside of work: I play table tennis. I’m a pretty good table tennis player. I have some Chinese colleagues who can play very well. When I was young, I played squash. That’s really intense. I like to travel a lot – for fun, not for business.