Dr. Carolina Tallon is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and a member of the Advanced Manufacturing Team at Virginia Tech. Her research focuses on near-net-shaping and advanced manufacturing of ceramics for extreme environments, with an emphasis on developing techniques that allow bulk large size complex geometry components with tunable microstructure, with the same features as lab scale counterparts. She is the Chair of the Diversity Committee of the Materials Science and Engineering at Virginia Tech, and she is fully committed to diversity, inclusion and equity practices in her research and teaching activities.

Dr. Tallon completed her undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Granada (Spain) and received her PhD in Inorganic Chemistry at the Institute of Ceramic and Glass and the Universidad Autonoma in Madrid (Spain). She went to Australia in 2008 to undertake post-doctoral research developing ceramic materials for advanced defense applications, supported by the Defence Materials Technology Center. Since then she contributed to the research and teaching in the School of Engineering of the University of Melbourne, where she was a Lecturer (Teaching and Research) in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and the Academic Convenor of the Hallmark Materials Research Initiative. She has published 25 articles in international peer-reviewed journals, 2 book chapters, and has participated and contributed to more than 60 academic and technical presentations in conference and symposiums. Dr. Tallon was one of the 12 Australian Fresh Scientists in 2012 and she was part of the research group who won the prestigious Land Defence Australia National Industry Innovation Award in 2014 and CRC Innovation Award in 2015. She was the Chair of the 3rd conference in the series “Ultra High Temperature Ceramics: Materials for Extreme Environment Applications III” in 2015 and she is one of the co-chairs for the 5th conference of these series in 2020.