Join us for the STEAM Café this month! July’s STEAM talk, “Metals and Music: Arts + Engineering applied to Musical Instrument Design”, will be presented by Dr. Katrina Donovan, senior lecturer in the South Dakota Mines Department of Materials & Metallurgical Engineering, and Dr. Haley Armstrong, Mines director of bands.

For the past two years, South Dakota Mines junior metallurgical engineering students have engaged in projects creating new instruments to be used in concerts by the Mines music program. The projects challenged the students to view materials and design in drastically new ways. Dr. Katrina Donovan (senior lecturer, Department of Materials & Metallurgical Engineering) and Dr. Haley Armstrong (director of bands) will discuss the fascinating process of creating these new instruments from scratch and provide a hands-on view of the final designs.