Shridas Ningileri - VP Engineering
His current areas of focus includes applied research, testing and development in all areas of Aluminum production including alloy development, energy savings by melting optimization and process developments related to productivity improvement.
He has extensive experience in the ferrous casting industry with a focus on cast and nodular irons in process and product development and is an accomplished auditor for ISO 17025 and ISO 9000 and had also worked in the area of automotive standards.
He is the technical interface between Secat and the aluminum industry and is responsible for translating customer needs into project outlines and presenting the data and reports to customers.
He also holds the position of Director – Center for Aluminum Technology University of Kentucky and is responsible for handling and managing projects between consortia consisting of industry, university and government bodies.
Nicholas Nanninga - Technical Director
Prior to joining Secat, Dr. Nanninga was Corporate Director of Materials and Processes at Accuride Corporation. At Accuride, Nick managed a Materials lab that supported several North American facilities through materials testing and analysis, alloy development, and process R&D. During his time at Accuride, Nick developed a new alloy and forging process for manufacturing aluminum wheels. These patented technological advances resulted in a 15 % reduction in the weight of an industry standard commercial vehicle wheel.
Before Accuride, Dr. Nanninga spent two years at Timet Corporation, where he worked on developing novel titanium alloys and manufacturing processes. Nick started his career as a post-doc for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). At NIST, Nick was responsible for researching the effects of high-pressure hydrogen gas on the mechanical properties of metals, specifically those proposed for use in a “hydrogen economy”. To this end, Dr. Nanninga and his colleagues designed, built, and instrumented a safe facility for conducting mechanical tests inside a high-pressure hydrogen gas chamber.
Dr. Nanninga received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from Michigan Technological University in 2003, 2005, and 2008, respectively. Dr. Nanninga’s M.S. thesis focused on hydrogen embrittlement in steel fasteners used in the automotive industry. During his Ph.D., he investigated the high cycle fatigue behavior of AA6XXX aluminum extrusions, with specific emphasis on the effects of seam welds, charge welds, and die lines on fatigue properties.
Chenge Xiao - Technical Manager
Dr. Xiao received his doctorate in metallurgical engineering from University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He has more than 30 years of industrial and academic research and development experience. He possesses strong hands-on problem solving skills in metal casting, welding, heat-treatment, materials processing development, failure analysis and materials characterization utilizing various modern analytical techniques and instruments.
Xiyu Wen - Senior Research Associate
His research works focus on the physical and mechanical metallurgy mainly concerned with textures and microstructures of metal materials/sheet metal forming.
Wilson Xu - Senior Materials Engineer
Wilson has worked in materials engineering for more than 20 years. During past two decades he has mainly worked as an engineer in casting and heat treatment of light weight metals, fabrication of metal matrix composites, characterization of microstructures and nanostructures in various materials, relationships between physical, electrochemical, and mechanical properties and the microstructures of light weight metals. Wilson has authored or co-authored more than 100 publications on peer reviewed journals.
Yan Jin - Materials Engineer
Yan Jin, Ph.D., joined Secat as a Materials Engineer in December 2018. His work at Secat primarily relates to billet evaluation, including 6000 and 7000 series of aluminum alloys, failure analysis and evaluation on a series of aluminum products in forms of casting, forging, extrusion and rolling, etc., and materials characterization using Electron Microscopy techniques at UK Electron Microscopy Center (EMC).
He majored Materials Science and Engineering during his undergraduate and graduate studies, respectively. In 2016, he obtained Ph.D. degree in Materials Science and Engineering from University of Kentucky (UK) with focus on the effects of microstructure and microtexture on multi-site fatigue crack nucleation of high strength aluminum alloys. After completing his Ph.D., he worked in a R&D project sponsored by General Motors as a Postdoctoral Scholar at UK, focusing on developing and validating a scratch adhesion test method for thermal sprayed coating on die casting aluminum alloys. Prior to joining Secat, Dr. Jin worked at X-wave Innovations, Inc. as a Research and Development Engineer with emphasis on materials microstructure characterization and mechanical properties evaluation of additive manufactured lightweight alloys, such as Ti64 and Ni-based superalloys.
Randall Bowers - Materials Engineer
Randall Bowers joined Secat in 2004 as a Materials Engineer. Randall’s focus has been in the field of aluminum rolling ingot for beverage can sheet and automotive alloys. Randall handles projects related to failure analysis, product development, mechanical testing and forming, modeling, thermodynamic calculations, heat treating, and characterizations utilizing XRD, EBSD, DSC/TGA, DIC strain analysis, and microscopy. Randall is also involved in the procurement and evaluation of new equipment/techniques at Secat including sample/fixture machining, bringing new equipment online, and procedure development work.
Randall obtained his B.S. in Materials Engineering from the University of Kentucky in 2004.
Parvez Sindhi - Materials Engineer
Parvez completed his master’s degree in Materials Science in 2017, after which he started his career at Secat Inc. as a Materials Engineer. His work at Secat primarily relates to the testing and evaluation of aluminum extrusion products, billet evaluation, testing of aluminum sheets, wide range of mechanical testing, and managing the ISO 17025 standard of the laboratory.
Darren Hunter - Materials Engineer
Darren previously worked as a Quality Engineer in the automotive industry for 15 years, first in metal stamping and later in aluminum wheel manufacturing.
Alex Fryman - Materials Engineer
Janet Cecil - Administrative Support Associate
Brenda Moore - Staff Accountant
Brenda joined Secat in 2022 as the staff accountant. She oversees all the accounting process for the Lexington office. Brenda has a bachelor of science degree from Berea College and has worked in accounting for over 25 years in both private businesses and public accounting.
Andrew Schaedel - Design Technician
Andrew Schaedel joined Secat in 2022 and is primarily responsible for aluminum casting and processing, as well as performing mechanical testing and machining operations. Andrew has an Associate’s Degree from Louisville Technical Institute in Computer Aided Drafting and 10 years of experience in aluminum casting and processing.