Ian McCue

About

Ian McCue is an Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern University, holding the Morris E. Fine Junior Professorship in Materials and Manufacturing. He earned his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, where he also completed his B.S. in the same field. His research focuses on solving the problem of scalable processing for advanced, nanostructured materials by emphasizing advanced manufacturing and self-organization phenomena. His work aims to push the boundaries of microstructural control during fabrication to create new materials that are stronger, tougher, more thermally stable, and capable of self-repair. His research is divided into key areas including developing new manufacturing processes for nanocomposites for structural applications, studying the mechanical behavior of nanostructured materials, and advancing the fundamental understanding of the relationship between material architecture, diffusion pathways, external fields, and phase transformations.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Mechanical engineering
• Engineering
• Computer Security
• Artificial Intelligence
• Aerospace engineering
• Aeronautics
• Composite material
• Control engineering
• Materials science

Selected publications

• Materials design for hypersonics

  Nature Communications · 2024 · 321 citations

  Hypersonic vehicles must withstand extreme conditions during flights that exceed five times the speed of sound. These systems have the potential to facilitate rapid access to space, bolster defense capabilities, and create a new paradigm for transcontinental earth-to-earth travel. However, extreme aerothermal environments create significant challenges for vehicle materials and structures. This work addresses the critical need to develop resilient refractory alloys, composites, and ceramics. We w…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Closed-loop superconducting materials discovery

  npj Computational Materials · 2023 · 26 citations

  Abstract Discovery of novel materials is slow but necessary for societal progress. Here, we demonstrate a closed-loop machine learning (ML) approach to rapidly explore a large materials search space, accelerating the intentional discovery of superconducting compounds. By experimentally validating the results of the ML-generated superconductivity predictions and feeding those data back into the ML model to refine, we demonstrate that success rates for superconductor discovery can be more than dou…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Alloying effects on the microstructure and properties of laser additively manufactured tungsten materials

  Materials Science and Engineering A · 2024-08-18 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Effect of chemical short-range order and percolation on passivation in binary alloys

  Physical review. B./Physical review. B · 2024-08-20 · 6 citations

  articleSenior author

  We develop a percolation model for face centered cubic binary alloys with chemical short-range order (SRO) to account for chemical ordering/clustering that occurs in nominally random solid solutions. We employ a lattice generation scheme that directly utilizes the first nearest neighbor Warren-Cowley SRO parameter to generate the lattice. We quantify the effects of SRO on the first nearest neighbor three-dimensional (3D) site percolation threshold using the large cell Monte Carlo renormalization…

  PublisherDOI

• Materials laboratories of the future for alloys, amorphous, and composite materials

  MRS Bulletin · 2025-01-29 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract In alignment with the Materials Genome Initiative and as the product of a workshop sponsored by the US National Science Foundation, we define a vision for materials laboratories of the future in alloys, amorphous materials, and composite materials; chart a roadmap for realizing this vision; identify technical bottlenecks and barriers to access; and propose pathways to equitable and democratic access to integrated toolsets in a manner that addresses urgent societal needs, accelerates tec…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Compositional and Atomic-Scale Ordering Effects on Aqueous Passivation of Binary BCC and FCC Alloys

  NSF · $466k · 2022–2026

Frequent coauthors

• Jonah Erlebacher

  61 shared

• K. Sieradzki

  Arizona State University

  41 shared

• Alain Karma

  39 shared

• Mingwei Chen

  Johns Hopkins University

  38 shared

• J. Eckert

  Austrian Academy of Sciences

  36 shared

• Qing Chen

  Peking University Shenzhen Hospital

  36 shared

• Jörg Weißmüller

  Universität Hamburg

  36 shared

• Sean Hearne

  36 shared

Awards & honors

• Invited Speaker, Gordon Research Conference – Physical Metal…
• Materials Research Society Graduate Student Award, Silver (2…

Similar researchers at Northwestern University

• Tobin J. Marksh-176
• Joseph Hupph-171
• James D Thomash-160