Please consider attending this seminar: "Time-Resolved Microstructural Characterization and Properties of the Apis Mellifera Honeycomb" By Rahul Franklin Purdue MSE Preliminary Exam Advisor: Professor Nikhilesh Chawla ABSTRACT The natural honeycomb, with its repeating hexagonal lattice cells made out of wax, is one of nature's best engineered structures. Even though the honeycomb has inspired several modern engineering structures, an understanding of how the bees build them is lacking. Further, all previous works on studying the structure of the honeycomb have been based on 2D microscopy techniques or by direct visual observations. As a result, several seminal features of the comb microstructure, and how it is built have been overlooked and ignored. In this talk, I will describe a series of experiments based on interrupted, time-resolved x-ray microscopy to study the mechanisms for building the comb as a function of time. For the first time, the precise mechanisms by which the bees build the combs, as well as the heterogeneous microstructure of the combs will be discussed. The findings of this work will help us in elucidating this problem and could have several widespread implications in fields such as additive manufacturing, composite materials, synthetic materials, and entomology. Date: December 16, Thursday, 2021 Time: 10:00 AM Place: Webex- https://purdue.webex.com/meet/nikc Yuan-Yu Karen Morgan,Ph.D. Academic Advisor-Graduate Program School of Materials Engineering Neil Armstrong Hall of Engineering, Room 2217 765-494-4103 ymorgan@purdue.edu<mailto:ymorgan@purdue.edu>