From the UCSB Current: 

Aiming to develop high-performance materials for use in extreme environments — one of her primary research interests — UC Santa Barbara materials professor Tresa Pollock and her team are collaborating with GE and others to push the effort forward. Their work, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is the subject of a new video produced for the NSF series “Science Nation.”

From the NSF summary:

“With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), UC Santa Barbara materials scientist Tresa Pollock and colleagues are partnering with General Electric and others to develop new multilayered materials designed for high performance in extreme environments. Pollock’s team is pioneering the use of new modeling tools to speed up the development process and using advanced computer algorithms and Big Data analysis to hone their designs before testing them. They’ve also designed and built a custom microscope that combines electron, ion and laser beams to analyze the new materials for defects at the nanometer scale in 3-D. This addition of the laser speeds up the process of gathering the information, so what used to take six to nine months now takes a couple of days.”

The video can also be accessed here.

Please read the entire article at the UCSB Current.