Milan Ivosevic: Ideas & Creativity

Milan Ivosevic’s homeland of Vojvodina, North Serbia may be worlds away from Philadelphia in both distance and culture, but it is the foundation for why he is in materials today. In elementary school, Milan thought he wanted to be an artist who painted portraits for a living, but his family’s tradition of blacksmiths piqued his curiosity, steering him in the direction of engineering.

He learned about Drexel while working on a collaborative research project involving the machineability of Dr. Michel Barsoum’s 312 ceramic as a research engineer in a materials laboratory at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia. With a background in mechanical engineering and a major in manufacturing, Milan saw materials engineering as a logical next step in his career. He has proven to be a hard-working student with winning ideas; during his time at Drexel, he has won four best poster awards, a best paper award, three scholarships, and a Dean’s research award. He has also published one journal, three conference papers, and has presented at two international conferences.

Primarily under Dr. Richard Knight’s guidance, Milan recently received his M.S. from Drexel’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering. For his M.S., he worked on erosion protection of composite materials with co-advisors Dr. Surya Kalidindi, Dr. Giuseppe Palmese, and Dr. James Sutter from NASA Glenn Research Center. Currently, Milan is pursuing his Ph.D., for which he is expanding his knowledge in the fields of Computational Fluid Dynamic and Transport Phenomena applied on Thermal Spray Processes and is also being co-advised by Dr. Richard Cairncross from the Chemical Engineering Department.

Milan believes that engineering is closely related to art. When an engineer conceives of a new idea, he or she is functioning much as an artist does—trying out new and different concepts until eventually something works. When you reach a solution through creative means, says Milan, it is art. “We were trying to spray two materials at the same time and one material had a significantly higher density than the other. The materials would not stick to the substrate.” He analyzed the situation but could not find a solution to the problem. It was one afternoon while eating his lunch that the solution came to him as he sat there pondering his spoon. Just as an artist may sometimes need to step back to gain perspective, an engineer also sometimes needs a creative breakthrough to successfully solve a problem.

When asked what he will do after receiving his Ph.D., Milan says that he always keeps more than one opportunity in mind at once, including making connections in industry in America while also maintaining his contacts in his home country. When the time comes, he’ll see which is the best possibility and go forward. In the meantime, he says, everything is in the game.