Dr. Sanna Virtanen, Chair of Surface Science and Corrosion in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Germany’s Friedrich-Alexander University (FAU) Erlangen-Nürnberg, is the 2024 recipient of AMPP’s prestigious Willis Whitney Technical Achievement Award.
In this roundtable conversation also featuring Raul Rebak of GE Global Research and Dr. John Scully of the University of Virginia, Dr. Virtanen shares highlights from her distinguished career and lessons learned for the next generation, along with insight on what the Whitney Award means to her career.
Rebak and Dr. Scully — who currently serve as AMPP’s Program Committee Chair and Task Force Chair, respectively — add their perspectives on the AMPP Awards process and the ways in which winners will be honored and celebrated at the 2024 AMPP Annual Conference + Expo in March.
For more information, visit www.ampp.org/membership/member-resources/awards.
Welcome in to another new amp podcast I’m your host Ben Duos news editor with the amp Publications team today I’m excited to welcome in varul reeback of GE Global Research Sona veronin with Friedrich Alexander University and Dr John Scully of the University of Virginia here at amp we’re continuing to
Seek out innovative ways to engage with our members and highlight the outstanding work that’s being done in our field with that in mind we’re putting the spotlight in this episode on our Awards program here at amp and more specifically delving into to the remarkable achievements that led to SAA
Being honored with the prestigious Willis Whitney technical Achievement Award in 2024 each year the Whitney award recognizes an individual for outstanding contributions and merits that have received International recognition and impacting the global dissemination advancement and understanding of materials protection and performance related phenomena and processes SAA your work has already set
A benchmark in our industry and it should be very beneficial for our audience to hear directly from you about your journey and your insights Dr Scully and Raul my hope is that your roles as task force chair and program committee chair can help provide our audience with a deeper understanding of the criteria
The selection process and the overall impact of these Awards but before we get into the particulars I want to start by allowing each of you to briefly introduce yourselves to our audience just give us a brief overview if you could of what it is you’re doing today at your
Aformentioned employer as well as anything else of significance that you’d like to mention here off the top R let’s start with you hello my name is R reak I work at G General Electric research group in escan New York and I do a lot of mostly project management and also research in
The laboratory that shows in my code that I’m working today which is a holiday in my company but uh so that’s what I do and I of course participate at in many technical societies not only ampp but many other technical societies and inside ofpp I am the chair of the
Awards committee which is the one that administers about 15 different Awards and one of those is the Whitney award which is the most prestigious award in science for thepp and I’m very a our committee has um what is called a task Force groups which administer each one of the
Individual Awards inside of the committee and and Professor Cali is the task force chair of the prestigious as I said Win award so I will relate to John to speak next hi folks I’m John Scully and I’m the Charles Henderson chaired professor of Material Science and Engineering at
University of Virginia and I’m the co-director for the center for electrochemical Tech science and engineering uh I do research and education and so I teach my corrosion class uh typically to undergraduates and graduate students and The Graduate students uh come up this fall starting this week but I also do research on a
Variety of topics in corrosion and uh most of those can be seen somewhere a corrosion journal or on Google Scholar but um I believe in diversity so I try to work in a couple of different corosion areas and uh last but not least as I’m as mentioned I’m technical editor
Of corrosion Journal so I’m the technical editor and Chief and um I uh do other service activities one is the head up the task force on the WR Whitney Award of amp which is a very prestigious award probably the top Flagship Society award pleasure to be here yeah we’re
Glad to have you we’ll wrap up with our Awards winner can you tell us a little bit about yourself yes hello everybody so my name is s vonin I’m for corrosion science uh at the University of elang and Newberg which is located in Bavaria in Germany and uh in the department
Material Science and Engineering Department so uh I also do research of course in the F uh in in the field of corrosion science and engineering and also uh teaching so uh heading a research group of uh enthusiastic PhD students and and posts and uh it is uh I’ve been doing corrosion research my
Whole life actually like since my uh undergraduate education in Finland and then uh lived in different countries continuing doing uh research and education in the field of corrosion and it still is quite exciting for me so IPP I know mostly uh already from previous times uh and like from all the
Conferences I’ve attended to Let’s transition our discussion to to the awards specifically and obviously in this episode we’re talking primarily about the Whitney but beyond that I know there’s an entire class of winners that’s going to be honored in early March at the 2024 amp annual conference
In Expo in New Orleans if you could just tell us a little bit about the awards system and what the objectives are for you all at a committee level so yes at the committee level what as I said we administer several Awards we are open so suggestion also for new Awards for
People can create or or recognize other people that are not recognized right now but the the the important thing is to let maybe the younger Generations that that we are recognizing their contribution to the science of material protection and performance for the benefit of society at all so that’s the
Reason we have these several levels we have in science and we have a recognition also for for example early career for educators and for even people in the field or on the floor that do maybe Coatings or application of paints and things like that to a structur so
For Aesthetics for for benefit against corrosion and things like that so we are we are several areas of of that and and we invite everybody from ampp to participate in this Awards committee and maybe to contribute their knowledge or there are things that maybe the committee members at this moment are not
Seeing so we are ready to listen sent to everybody among those Awards the Whitney is clearly the flagship so can you all elaborate on that as far as what the award stands for and I’ll toss this to Dr Scully because I also want to ask what stood out with regards to Sona
Candidacy this year sure Ben thank you for asking um so the Whitney award as I mentioned is a flagship award in the society that goes way back to 1947 and it’s been awarded every year since then um and first award of course going to w r Whitney and he took the corosion field
Was a was largely based on some really good but empirical knowledge and um he he he sought to provide a scientific Foundation that would guide you uh when you came up with a new unexpected or a new service environment or new alloy or um new coding that or new mitigation
Strategy and corrosion you would have some theory on behind it and so the Whitney award is given for significant really lifetime integrated body of work over life scientific contributions they could be in theory they could be in methods that everybody uses today they could be mitigation science and
Protection they could be on damage damage prediction and mechanisms of damage uh even people are challenged industry is challenged all the time with accelerated testing you know what do how do we re how do we reproduce life time we don’t have 10 years to wait to test
Something in the in the field we need an accelerated test so what’s literally science of accelerated testing and last but not least emerging materials or materials in unusual environments harsh environments you might think about and in in saa’s case she embodies all that she’s done research in all those areas
Uh some of her notable work is in the Nexus between biom medical physiological and materials and so she’s done some of the most seminal work in this area particularly with magnesium but not just also in Dental alloys and uh more broadly she’s done really surface layers looked at how surface layers regulate
Corrosion processes and regulate other processes going on at the same time um and I would I could say passivation but that’s probably a little bit too narrow her her uh experience with surface layers uh that people use all the time in corrosion or they get them is is
Really notable and so when you put all that together it’s it’s not just one thing and so something that you know future would uh nominees might consider as many many things and it’s an integrated lifetime body of work and that can be seen in things you know not
The only indicator but things like Google Scholar uh where she has over 16,000 citations to a work um she has over 210 papers that been cited 10 times just think about that 210 papers you know that’s probably um you know that’s five a year for her career and those
Kind of achievements are are are really what stood out to the word committee Sona can you tell us and our audience a little more about your career Journey how did you get from where you started all those years ago to where you are today yes it has been a long journey so
Uh so I was I grew up and was educated first in Finland my native country and uh I was studying Material Science and Engineering at Helsinki University of Technology and I got into corrosion uh corrosion sence by uh actually during my master studies ma master master education and my master thesis uh I
Carried out in in the uh in on a very interesting and challenging topic on related to corrosion of ice breakers so uh okay so this was Finland and it was also during winter time I I was uh at that time I was actually it wasn’t because of just because of corrosion
That I wanted to do corrosion but it was uh it was a nice opportunity to a very nice topic to work on then I moved to Switzerland uh where I did my PhD at the feder Swiss Federal Institute of Technology eth Zurich I then uh got really really excited about corrosion
Because it’s such an interesting topic to study because corrosion phenomena are it’s like at the interface of materials and environment there’s interfacial electrochemistry there are Dynamic changes with time you have to understand materials you have to understand micr structures of materials but then you have to have a good
Understanding of chemistry as well so scientifically it’s quite interesting and when you continue working in the field of corrosion you realize that corrosion is so important because it’s we are dealing with corrosion issues everywhere uh in in our normal every everyday life so if it’s your car or
Your bicycle you can have rusting going around if if you think in terms of human health like uh Dr scul already mentioned previously I had these projects dealing with uh corrosion of biomedical implants I had I had so I had I I have been working uh uh in the fields of Health in
A way so of course always from the side of the material science part but then at this interface towards medicine and health of human beings and of course corrosion has a lot to do with sustainability sustainable future because you you you don’t want to just let the materials we are using just to
Corrode away so so for me corrosion has been this journey has been interesting because even though I’ve been doing research in the field of corrosion for such a long time there are always new issues coming up and it could be new applications of metallic materials where these materials encounter new type of
Challenges due to the application but also of course related to U development of new type of materials so new micr structures by new processing or new type of uh Alloys so there is has been a lot to do and we will continue having these challenges even though we understand
Nowadays much more about corrosion mechanisms but uh I think this is something the research is going to continue strongly for me in my my uh career I think what has been really really rewarding and important I have been very lucky to have very inspiring mentors from the beginning and then I
Had this uh opportunity to uh live and work in different countries so I was also staying sometime at in the USA and in Canada and uh always always working together with extremely exciting and inspiring researchers in the field of corrosion and of course then also uh
What is fantastic when you when you work at University and you do research you have this opportunity to go to conferences to meet people meet colleagues start collaborations from from from uh from with colleagues from all from everywhere from everywhere in the world and and and this is something
Wonderful which keeps you kind of like also energetic because I like to do my work on my own also but then also having all these interactions with the different colleagues and of course at the University but is also really really rewarding is is the opportunity to to
Work together with uh young people so being able to to help the next uh generations of researchers to start their careers and this is just something wonderful I know one area that’s been a major success for you over your career is with regards to alloy corrosion you’ve made major contributions to our
Understanding of that is there anything in particular that stands out in terms of your areas of research Within all corrosion not just for you but your research team as well is there any particular highlight or two from your career that really stands out in that capacity I think I’ve yeah I think this
Is difficult to answer for me I I I I think uh things that just kind of like from one topic to the next there they were just like developing sometimes it was a question also honestly sometimes uh uh many of the a lot of the work was done because of scientific curiosity but
Some of the work started also because there were funding opportunities and then it then it turned into really exciting scientific questions so it’s always lot of these different things going on I think uh what has been really interesting is like for instance uh if we think uh magnesium Alloys so I
Started first working on magnesium Alloys because uh uh they uh lightweight structural metals or materials and there was interest of using them for instance in cars because of lightweight and there of course you need really really good Corrosion Protection for magnesium alls because magnesium is of course the most
Reactive technically important metal and then it happened that when I came to elang and so I moved from Switzerland to Germany I was contacted by uh some researchers who were interested in using magnesium as a biodegradable metal for temporary implantation and they and they knew that I had I had done some some
Work related to magnesium alloy corrosion so now we still have the same type of Alloys but different environment and different and now now it was very exciting for me because suddenly people liked the fact that magnesium is corroding easily so now corrosion was something they wanted to have but they
Just wanted to have enough of understanding how magnesium is corroding under the biological environment so that one could control the corrosion rate and then uh when I moved into this biodegradable magnesium then again being in Germany now I then also had new projects starting going back to the classic magnesium corrosion case so
Magnesium in cars and interestingly uh looking at these phenomena from the different viewpoints the environment and the application was different of course the corrosion mechanisms the basics and principles remain the same and both of these or or the different fields I was working in with the same type of Alloys they were
Also profiting from the fact that I had projects from both sides of magnesium field so to say but I don’t know there I think there were many highlights in my view that were exciting for me but I cannot really say like what would have been like the most important to anything like
This as far as the future I know there’s no cryptal ball but are there any general areas or points of emphasis when it comes to what’s on the horizon and future areas of research for you and your team first of all my my future and my team hopefully will continue working
Still some years but uh not so long that I mean uh I’ve been working now quite an extended number of years and and at some point uh it will I will be going towards retirement you know in in Europe we have retirement we don’t continue working
Forever but I will of course keep uh working still some years and certainly I will I will never stop probably reading reading literature and following up what is going on uh in the FI in the field of materials performance and protection and corrosion I think uh one thing that is
Coming up very strongly now uh has been coming up already quite uh strongly uh materials U new type of materials new type of micr structures new type of chemical compositions related to processing methods such as uh additive manufacturing it’s not really new it has been been going on already quite some
Time but uh there are good opportunities to get new uh uh materials properties with these type of techniques how to make materials and then the other thing is uh where generally probably materials is call Material Science uh there will be new developments uh things related to of course artificial intelligence and
These kind of new opportunities for research in general in addition to your day job researching corrosion you’ve clearly taken on a leadership role within the industry at large that’s evidenced by your work within amp your Marquee roles with various industry Publications and your mentorship for the Next Generation
Which I know is something you pointed to previously in this interview as important can you give us a little bit of color on why that’s such a clear point of emphasis for you to go the extra mile Beyond simply what your day job is and and really try to um you know
Leave this industry better for the next Generation that’s coming in behind you as you were just describing I think it’s just important of course that uh if if you generally wherever you work but especially of course it comes naturally when you work at the University that that one is uh it’s one
Of the biggest things or the most important things of course that the university that you also care about the Next Generation because this is that’s what we do we are we are educating Next Generation researchers and Engineers of course but it it gives you extra I mean
If I would be working only in view of writing as many Publications for myself so to say or maybe for my colleagues who read them it’s one thing but it just gives you at least to me it has given so much more if I if I have a feeling that
Something that I have taught in a classroom or by discussion with my students here in my office and they remember maybe later what I taught them and and it can help them to solve also future challenges related to materials or even if they just remember some small things related to some basic corrosion
Issues it just gives you a good feeling but it’s important for the world and for the society for sure so for me it’s natural it’s it’s normal that it’s important what does the Whitney award mean to you and when I asked that question I’m asking it in both a short-term and a
Long-term sense because obviously shortterm you’ll be recognized at conference there’s a Whitney lecture I believe on Tuesday and so it’s great to receive that recognition in front of your peers but I’m also thinking long term how it could potentially help your career any areas of future research just
Explain what the award means for you both now and in the future when I heard about that I I was award I was uh recognized with this award I was extremely happy and and and and felt very honored about it I know about the Whitney award like from a long
Long time because I remember of course attending to conferences when I was still a PhD student myself and and then see seeing these U Whitney presentations of uh quite uh famous people and uh of course if I look at the list of their Whitney Award winners it’s of course uh
Great to be one of these uh great to be one of one of the people who who have uh who have gotten this recognition so it makes me very happy and very honored uh and uh of course because it’s a it’s an it’s an award given by an uh leading
Society or Association in the field of corrosion science and technology and it is such a prestigious Award of course I feel uh as I said very honored to uh that I have been selected as an avoid winner for this of course it also is very it’s certainly helpful to to have
This award in your CV so to say if you uh I mean first of all uh locally here my my group has been also excited about it because of course it’s also their award you know right because you don’t get an award because not just yourself
You need your your group I mean it’s it’s it’s it’s a it’s a joint award for many many people who contributed to the research I’ve been doing and then of course it all in all I mean Awards to uh help you I mean whatever we do when we
Write Grant proposals or when we when we uh I mean just even in the department at the University level it’s uh of course a good feeling when not only I mean yes it’s it’s that you know that there are colleagues around that you feel that you deserve such an
Award it’s good good for anybody’s career also certainly absolutely rul as far as attendees at the conference what should they be looking out for as it pertains to the 2024 Awards obviously the Whitney is the flagship but there’s several beyond that how can people that are in New Orleans take part in the
Celebration yeah you know as you said the not only the whitne but but many other Awards so we are very pleased that from last year was the first time the mppp gave Awards in many categories this in New Orleans will be the second time and we are very pleased on the looking
At the awards to see the diversity I think this is the first time where the majority of the award winners are women actually and and this is very nice to see that we we named several Awards now after women because before was mostly named after you know white males and
Things like that so there is a huge diversity we have a award winners not only from the United States but from Europe from Asia and many other countries so everybody can participate now and be be happy that they belong to this community of of of corrosion and and Coatings and material protection and
Performance so we are extremely pleased with this new Society and the the the range of of of Award winners that we have as I said it’s not only professors at the University explaining corrosion mechanisms but also people that contribute to the industry at large I want to allow you to have the
Last word as we wind down our podcast for any listeners that may want to reach out to you maybe they want to congratulate you or to just learn more about your career what are the ways that they can do that so first of all of
Course I want to thank ampp and I want to thank the award committee and uh everybody who worked on my Nom nomination really really many many thanks uh for this wonderful wonderful thing you gave me if anybody’s interested in uh learning a little bit more about certain things related to
What was discussed here what was said to me everybody is welcome to talk to me when I come to the meeting in New Orleans maybe not everybody I mean I I would be glad to talk to everybody but there will be a couple of thousand of attendees but uh I’m open to any
Discussion and of course people can also reach out to me by email and and and we can chat about things so thank you for everybody thank you for taking the time to join us and again congratulations BR and Dr Scully anything that you all want to add before we close up
Shop I just want to add congratulations to saana and I do want to give a little advertisement so the talk will be on on Tuesday and we look forward to that um to be announced the room number in the exact time uh I also want to tell you
That uh there will be reception and sas’s Honor on Tuesday night and that’s the Ohio State University of Virginia joint recession re reception that um occurs on Tuesday night and so stay tuned for that and we’ll get a chance to have a toast with SAA awesome BR anything you’d like to throw
Out no no thank you very much it just on the advertisement from John that has been a a huge tradition that we had for many years about meeting on Tuesday night so and of course will celebrate the achievement of Santa at that time thank you absolutely sounds great can’t
Wait to hopefully take part all right that will do it for this episode I want to thank our distinguished panelists of course the Whitney Award winner for 2024 s vinin also Raul reeback and Dr John Scully again thanks to all of those guys for their contributions to our industry
And for taking the time today as far as me and us here at amp I’m Ben dubos news editor for the amp Publications team if you want more resources from us the easiest way to get them is at .org .org also ace. a.org ac. .org that’s the website for the conference
And there’s also an app we don’t have a printed program this year everything is going to be through the app so if you have not downloaded that app already in advance of your trip to New Orleans please do that annual conference app is where you can get the latest up-to-date
Schedule on everything going on on the ground in New Orleans obviously the Witney award lecture Awards Night the things we’ve been describing today as well as a full conference schedule of symposia forums exhibit hall for three days I believe so much activity on the ground in New Orleans we hope to see you
And for the latest schedule the easiest way to do that is by downloading the amp annual conference app for your phone all right with those plugs complete we will adjourn here for Sonic Dr John Scully and Raul reeback we will wrap it thanks as always for listening and please come
Back soon for another new amp podcast