Tyler Leibengood is a fifth-year undergraduate student from Clyde, Ohio. He is double majoring in Physics and in Mathematics. Starting in January 2020, Tyler began a spring internship at NASA Glenn Research Center working at the High Temperatures and Smart Alloys Branch at studying materials development for high temperature environments. His work was centered around performing defect analysis of additively manufactured dispersion-strengthened high temperature alloys.

Tyler found out about different opportunities to work with NASA while attending a career fair at the SIAM Conference on Computational Science and Engineering. At the career fair, he learned that it was far less competitive to get accepted into an internship with NASA during the fall or spring as opposed to summer opportunities. He applied for the following spring internship and got in!

A hallmark of Tyler’s NASA internship was his ability to solve an ongoing mystery that began during the summer of 2019. The additive manufacturing process produced an undocumented defect in a dispersion-strengthened alloy. The origin of the defect remained undetermined until Tyler arrived. He correctly characterized the geometry of a regularly patterned defect. Further experiments designed by Tyler lead to the identification of the source of the defect, contributing a great deal to the development of the alloy. His findings are included in a manuscript currently in the process of being submitted to the Joint Army Navy NASA Air Force (JANNAF) Journal of Propulsion and Energetics to be published. Tyler’s unique experience in advanced mathematics gave him an edge at solving the issue he was given in a relatively timely matter.

Tyler remains on the President’s list for all his semesters of full-time enrollment at YSU. Tyler has achieved a score of 10 in the PUTNAM competition, an admirable score for the notably difficult mathematics exam (of last year's more than 4,000 international participants, the average score was 2!). Tyler also participated twice on a team in the SIMIODE Challenge Using Differential Equations Modeling in 2018 and 2019. In addition to his NASA internship, Tyler has completed two other registered internships during his undergraduate career. During summer 2018, Tyler served as a BLUFF Intern at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. During summer 2019, he served as a TRIM Computational REU Student Research Intern at Cleveland State University.

He is an active member of the Youngstown State University Clarence P. Gould Honor Society, Pi mu Epsilon Ohio Xi Chapter, Robotics Club, and Society of Physics Students. Tyler is a former member of the Youngstown State University Marching Pride and former president of One Achord, a YSU student organization for barbershop and men’s acapella singing.

Tyler plans to continue his research in metallurgy while earning a PhD in Materials Science & Mechanical Engineering. Following his graduate studies, Tyler plans on seeking full-time employment at NASA through The Pathways Program.

He expressed gratitude for the faculty at YSU, saying, "I want to thank everyone at YSU who helped me find success at my internships, especially my success at NASA. It truly would have been impossible without the mentorship of the professors in my departments."