Matthew Lynch is a PhD candidate in the Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences department at the University of Michigan, focusing on nuclear materials. In 2021, Matthew received a NASA Space Technology Fellowship (NSTGRO) for his proposal, titled “Additively manufactured self-repairing Ni-metal composite through high aspect ratio pathways”. His research aims to design & demonstrate novel metal-nanomaterial composites to serve as structural materials in advanced reactor designs, both for terrestrial and space applications. He is passionate about taking a bottom-up approach to materials design. He also works on synthetic data development methods for machine learning applications to improve microstructure characterization. Outside of the lab, Matthew spends his time preparing for his upcoming mission to “Mars”, as the engineer on Crew 297.