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About
About
Research
Research
Experience
Experience
Contact
Contact
Yareli Gonzalez illustration

Yareli Gonzalez

Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Student

About Me

Decorative ASCII art image

I'm a Metallurgical and Materials Engineering student at the University of Texas at El Paso, graduating May 2027. I'm currently a Quality Metallurgy Intern at Nucor Steel Texas in Jewett, where I previously spent eight months as a co-op doing failure analysis, root cause investigations, and quality work across the full production sequence.

I'm interested in how defects form in materials and how we can catch them before they become real problems. Most recently, I worked as a Metallurgical Intern at Freeport-McMoRan's rod and refining plant in El Paso, investigating wire break failures and characterizing tankhouse products using SEM/EDS analysis.

In my past lives, I've conducted research on magnetically actuated millirobots at Southern Methodist University's BAST Lab (2019), worked as a legislative intern at the National Mining Association (2024) analyzing the intersection of environmental policy and critical minerals supply chains, and spent over a year at UTEP's Polymer Extrusion Lab (2023-2024) developing shape memory polymer blends for NSF-funded additive manufacturing research.

About This Site

Coding is something I do for fun outside of metallurgy work, and this site is one of those projects. It's built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript using Atkinson Hyperlegible, Lora, Crimson Text, and some monospace fonts. I drew all the icons and graphics myself. The layout is inspired by old computer interfaces and physical objects like browser windows, books, and phones.

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Yareli Gonzalez

Education

University of Texas at El Paso Expected May 2027
Bachelor of Science in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering

Experience

Quality Metallurgy Intern, Nucor – Jewett, TX May 2026 – Present
  • Continuing quality metallurgy work in Nucor's steelmaking operations.
Metallurgical Intern, Freeport-McMoRan – El Paso, TX Dec 2025 – May 2026
  • Performed failure analysis on customer submissions involving wire breaks and weld failures in copper, aluminum, and tin-coated rod and wire products. Wire break investigations used SEM/EDS and optical microscopy to check for defects such as excessive oxides, inclusions, slivers, and hollow cup/cone breaks, as well as grain structure to identify deviations from the elongated equiaxed grains expected from rolling. Weld submissions were examined for porosity, grain flow, and heat-affected zone dimensions. Customers also sent samples for grain size analysis, sometimes in large batches. All of this work was done on a quick turnaround basis.
  • On the process side, cathodes were visually inspected daily for nodulation, salt deposits, and other surface conditions. Crop bar metallography was performed for routine casting quality assessment, and starter sheet metallography for electrodeposition quality. Rod mill materials were characterized for long-term archival and inclusion benchmarking. Suspect material drillings were pelletized for chemical analysis. Tankhouse products — cathodes, starter sheets, and anode slimes — were analyzed by EDS to support process adjustments; for example, examining salt deposits on starter sheets to determine whether electrolyte calcium levels were too high.
Quality Metallurgy Co-Op, Nucor – Jewett, TX Jan 2025 – Aug 2025
  • Responsible for quality across the full production sequence, from pulling and evaluating line samples to reviewing finished product against customer specifications. Day-to-day work included gauging dimensions, grading surface defects, and writing NCRs on nonconforming material. Root cause investigations required metallographic preparation and analysis, interpreting grain structures and inclusion morphologies to connect failure mechanisms to specific steelmaking conditions, with findings presented directly to production supervisors. SEM/EDS analysis on billets that failed E45 inclusion testing resolved over $900,000 in customer claims. Also wrote Python automation that reduced weekly scrap data processing from two hours to twenty minutes.
Legislative & Technology Intern, National Mining Association – Washington, D.C. June 2024 – Aug 2024
  • Quantified regulatory compliance costs totaling $2.3 million across eight operations for congressional testimony on proposed EPA regulations, and analyzed 15+ critical minerals patents and federal legislation to assess domestic supply chain risks. I researched 6PPD tire additive toxicity and its operational implications for mining, and translated complex mineral processing technologies into technical fact sheets for congressional staff, making the case for domestic mineral security at the policy level.
Research Assistant, UTEP Polymer Extrusion Lab – El Paso, TX Feb 2023 – June 2024
  • Developed binary and ternary thermoplastic polyurethane blends for biomedical shape memory applications, optimizing blend compositions to achieve a 10% tensile strength increase and 99.9% shape recovery rate. I produced consistent filaments for FDM printing using twin-screw extrusion and characterized polymer behavior via SEM, DMA, and XRD to verify thermal transitions critical to shape memory performance. The work culminated in a co-authored publication in the Journal of Materials Science.

Skills

Materials Characterization: SEM/EDS, metallography, DMA, XRD, FTIR, tensile testing, hardness testing

Software: Python, MATLAB, SolidWorks, ANSYS Workbench, Git, Power BI

Manufacturing & Processing: Twin-screw extrusion, heat treatment, FDM printing, injection molding

Licenses & Certifications

OSHA 10-Hour General Industry – CareerSafe (ID 14-702040932) Issued August 2020

Publications

Carrillo, L.E.L., Gonzalez, Y.O., Parga, M. et al. Development of binary and ternary polyester shape memory blends for additive manufacturing. Journal of Materials Science 59, 8040–8057 (2024).
Publications
Research

and

Projects

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Carrillo, L.E.L., Gonzalez, Y.O., Parga, M. et al.
Journal of Materials Science 59, 8040–8057 (2024)
Developed novel thermoplastic polyurethane blends achieving 99.9% shape recovery rate for biomedical 3D printing applications through systematic optimization of blend compositions and processing parameters.
Figure 1. Shape memory performance across different PCL/TPU blend ratios and print orientations.
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Research & Projects 🔬 Click a tab to open
Carrillo, L.E.L., Gonzalez, Y.O., Parga, M. et al.
Journal of Materials Science 59, 8040–8057 (2024)
Developed novel thermoplastic polyurethane blends achieving 99.9% shape recovery rate for biomedical 3D printing applications through systematic optimization of blend compositions and processing parameters.
Figure 1. Shape memory performance across different PCL/TPU blend ratios and print orientations.
Metallographic Grain Size Analysis Tool
Web Application • 2024
Interactive browser-based tool for metallographic analysis featuring adaptive image enhancement (CLAHE), automated grain boundary detection with intelligent filtering, phase identification with color-coded overlays, and ASTM E112 standard grain size calculations.
Figure 2. Interface showing image preprocessing controls and quantitative grain size results.
Figure 3. Interactive zoom view with phase segmentation.
Get in Touch

Open to discussing materials research, industry opportunities, or technical collaboration.

Contact Info

Email: hello@yareligonzalez.com

LinkedIn: /in/yareli-gonzalez

GitHub: /yareligonzalez

Thanks For Visiting!
  • © Yareli Gonzalez 2025

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