Page 21 - CEMS News Summer 2020

ALUMNI NEWS
Returning home
An alumna and Minnesota native, Professor Erica T. Lilleodden (MSE ’96) served as the 36th George T. Piercy Distinguished Visiting Professor.
“I am most thankful to CEMS for awarding me the 2020 Piercy Visiting Professorship. Taking my sabbatical at CEMS was influenced by the proximity to family and friends; I am a Saint Paul native and proudly received
my bachelor’s degree in materials science from the department in 1996. I had several objectives for the planned six months; I expected to work closely with colleagues I already knew well – namely Nate Mara and Bill Gerberich, but also recognized that the strengths of such a department promised the development of new ideas to bring back to Germany. And, indeed this was the case.
Within weeks of arriving, those initially planned collaborations led to hours-long discussions with other faculty, not only in CEMS but also in the departments of Aerospace Engineering, Physics and Chemistry, and entirely new experiments were conceived. In fact, I had just finished my obligatory lab safety training for my planned organic chemistry experiments – the irony not lost on me that it was the required organic chemistry course which motivated me to change my major from chemical engineering to materials science – when the novel coronavirus changed everything.
In the face of the pandemic, I witnessed how quickly the faculty, staff and students came together to navigate uncharted waters, figuring out how to carry out research when labs are closed, and how to teach courses effectively from a computer screen. But despite how much virtual interaction platforms can be utilized for maintaining progress in research and scholarship, it is not a proper replacement for real personal interactions. And it is the personal interactions afforded by the Piercy Visiting Professorship that are critically needed to foster scientific inspiration and long-term collaboration. Those long discussions I had with professors in front of white- boards, the time spent scouring through older (i.e., not available online!) texts in Walter Library, and the spirited debates held over lunch in the Campus Club or over rounds of beer later in the day, could not be replaced by online means.
Dr. Erica Lilleodden was honored as the George T. Piercy Distinguished Visiting Professor at a department dinner in February 2020. She is pictured with her undergraduate advisor and mentor, CEMS Professor Emeritus Bill Gerberich. Photo credit: Rebecca Slater, By Rebecca Studios.
Sadly, my family and I made the difficult decision to move back to Germany - my adopted home - many months earlier than planned. Yet those two and a half months were densely packed with amazing experiences: engaging with Nate Mara and his research group on nanomechanical analyses, planning new scientific experiments with Dan Frisbie and Tim Lodge, discussing with Ellad Tadmor the limitations of molecular dynamics in understanding experimental observation, and waxing philosophical with Jorge Vinals about punctuated equilibrium.
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