Nathaniel Melisso

I'm a materials engineer working on partial melting and solidification in ultra-thin metal films — the regime where a film is hot enough to melt in places but not everywhere, and where the resulting microstructure decides whether a device works. I lead the atomic force microscopy side of that effort, comparing what the films actually do against what simulation says they should.

Before Columbia I earned a BS in Materials Engineering from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Along the way I've built machine-learning models to predict phase behavior in high-entropy alloys, simulated fouling dynamics for industrial bioreactors, reconstructed vehicle collisions for expert-witness work, and spent a summer in a Japanese shipyard learning to weld the hulls of ultra-large container vessels. The thread running through all of it: I like problems where you have to understand the material and the process at the same time.