Anugrahaprada “Anu” Mukundan: Whimsical microscopy and metal microstructures
This piece was written in the fall of 2025 by GRAD 5144 (Communicating Science) student Matthew Mair as part of an assignment to interview a classmate and write a news story about their research.
Anu Mukundan smiles as she shows me yet another slide comparing her electron microscopy images to fictional characters and scenes from real life.
“I think this one looks like a stick figure,” she says, pointing to a structure that indeed looks similar to stick figures I’ve drawn in the past.
When Anu talks about her research, it’s hard not to get as excited as she is. Flipping past another slide comparing one of her images to a character from a popular anime, she reflects, “I did not know I had a whimsical brain until I started looking at microstructures and found myself calling them cute.”
It’s not something you would expect to hear from a typical scientist. But then again, Anu is not your typical scientist.
Anu received her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in India before moving to the United States to complete a master’s degree in materials science and engineering (MSE) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. After excelling there, Anu decided to continue her education at Virginia Tech in a Ph.D. program in MSE. Her current work relates to metal alloys and how their microstructures impact their behavior in real-world applications.
According to Anu, her work with alloys is akin to the biopsies that biologists complete on animals to understand how they work inside. The million-dollar electron microscope that she uses has a magnification factor of up to a few millions, allowing her to view the structure of her alloy samples at an atomic level. Using electrons as the source rather than light, this microscope allows the user to generate high-resolution images of very small objects.
Yet it’s not enough to just look through the microscope to get the data, Anu says. Samples for the electron microscope must be roughly 50 -100 nm thick (about 1000 times less than the thickness of a strand of human hair). She spent months polishing and thinning down her sample of a tungsten alloy until it met these exact dimensions.
Anu’s current work relates to the microstructures of 3D-printed metal alloys. Because 3D-printed metals allow for precision construction, the market is rapidly expanding and evolving, making research in this space important, necessary, and lucrative, she says. The process of creating 3D-printed metals typically requires building objects layer by layer from metal powders and using lasers to melt and fuse the powder into the shape required.
Anu’s primary research project is all about 3D-printed tungsten alloys, which have potential applications in nuclear fusion reactors. The metals used in the cores of these reactors must be capable of withstanding immensely high temperatures and forces, but researchers have not decided on the best candidate for this material yet. The group Anu works with hopes to engineer and adapt existing tungsten alloys to improve their performance for this purpose.
If they are successful, this improvement could mark a significant step in the global transition to renewable energy. Her second project focuses on the 3D printing of aluminum alloys. Aluminum is one of the most commonly found alloys in existing products, which means there are plenty of opportunities for recycling. The goal here is to convert recycled aluminum to powders for 3D printing and test how the structure of 3D-printed metals from recycled aluminum varies from those printed from pure powders. Anu is very excited about the potential for this research to improve our ability to recycle metals and support sustainability initiatives. And she loves to look for the “hidden images” in the many electron micrographs she assesses as part of her work.
Anu has an impressive research agenda, but I also took something else away from my talk with her: I find myself hoping to bring a bit of whimsy into my own research and daily life — and perhaps you will, too.