Francesca Long

    Ph.D. Student

    Phone: 847.491.5888
    Email: francescalong2021@u.northwestern.edu
    Address: 2220 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208

I was born and raised just outside of Oxford, England and lived there until I was 11. My grandparents were physicists and my parents both studied materials science, although my father later changed towards computer science. My brother is also a materials scientist making this path in life rather inevitable! After my time in England, I moved with my mother to Naperville, a suburb of Chicago, where I attended middle and high schools before going to Madison, Wisconsin for undergrad. There I obtained a bachelor’s degree in Materials Science & Engineering, in addition to a minor in Classical Studies. Throughout my time at UW-Madison I worked in a variety of research groups: studying cell mechanics for wound healing, analyzing the properties of a new aluminium welding alloy, and attempting to grow inorganic-organic hybrid perovskite thin films by CVD. I also spent a summer at UCSB working on Heusler thermoelectrics. Outside of materials science, I enjoy cooking, baking, and hanging out with my friends and cat.

My work here at Northwestern will revolve around studying Co-based superalloys for high temperature mechanical applications. Due to a unique y-y' microstructure, these alloys are of significant interest to potentially replace Ni-based superalloys.