Interests are like a spark. When carefully stoked, a spark can ignite a flame, and just as molten iron becomes steel, an interest can be shaped into a passion.
Forrest Dills, a Lexington native and a senior at the University of Kentucky majoring in Material Science in Engineering, forged his way to UK CAER because of a passion for metalworking.
“One of the things that got me into material science was that I’ve been doing blacksmithing since I was 15,” said Dills.
From humble beginnings in his parents’ backyard, Dills pursued metalworking with his mother’s blessing using whatever materials were at his disposal.
The first forge that Dills built was nothing more than a bucket filled with cement. “It was terrible, but by God, it was an interesting start to my material science career,” said Dills. “My shop is still actually there in the garage, maybe one day I’ll have a chance to set it up somewhere and kind of make a living out of it.”
After high school, Dills enrolled at Bluegrass Community and Technical College without a clear direction. His path changed when he took an intermediate materials science course with CAER Program Manager Dave Eaton. Eaton found Dills to be an inquisitive student with a penchant for engineering and a shared love of the band Megadeath.
“I had a class of about 30 students. There were several stand outs, but Forrest always asked great questions- more than just seeking clarification, he was really trying to see what this could mean to the world. I was eager to offer Forrest a chance to come to CAER, even before we had a formal position for him. It’s no secret that CAER is a scientific wonderland. We have a good history of students who come in without an obvious home finding their place as a student employee, some going on to do a Master’s or PhD with us. I could see he had the heart and mind for it,” Eaton said.
At the recommendation of Eaton, Dills transferred to UK and joined CAER in May of 2023. It was a perfect strike of the hammer for Dills, who was now tempering his passion.
“I just kind of hit off here,” said Dills.
After working with Eaton gathering data and control experiments for 6 months, Dills was taken under the wing of Senior Research Scientist Aman Preet Kaur to begin working on battery research.
Dills found the best way to learn was by doing, and he was given that opportunity early on in his career at UK CAER. After two weeks of working on the project making electrodes for batteries with supervision, he was promoted to producing electrode slurries and battery assembly and testing on his own.
“To have that level of trust in an undergraduate, it’s kind of rare nowadays,” said Dills. “The work we do here is genuinely beneficial to the industry and society as a whole.”
Dills’ work, like much at UK CAER, is built off sustainability and using recyclable materials to positively impact energy emissions.
“We create synthetic graphite electrodes for our batteries out of materials like waste coal,” said Dills. “To put it into simpler terms, we are trying to find a way to take coal and oil that is no longer being utilized and synthesize it into usable carbon for making batteries.”
Though satisfied with his work and what he has learned, Dills attributes a lot of his satisfaction with the environment and people around him at UK CAER.
“I think everyone here has helped me in one way or another…everyone’s very passionate about their work and when you’re passionate about your work it makes showing up easier,” said Dills. “There is a reason I have stuck around.”
Sticking around can be tough, especially as an undergraduate senior keeping an eye on the future.
“This is usually the time period where a lot of [seniors] would be frantically looking for jobs trying to get whatever can be secured after college.”
Dills, however, is currently not too concerned with the rat race. He is forging his own path, slowly and surely.
“I haven’t been as motivated to do that, as I find that the research here at the center is very rewarding…I feel like we have barely scratched the surface of the research that we could potentially do here at the center.”
For now, Dills is content with his work at CAER and continues stoking the flames of a passion that he began shaping in his mom’s backyard.
