Somewhat oddly I guess, my thesis advisor worked on both high temperature intermetallics and ice (the latter through a partnership with a US Army Lab in Hanover

Somewhat oddly I guess, my thesis advisor worked on both high temperature intermetallics and ice (the latter through a partnership with a US Army Lab in Hanover, NH). I actually did my thesis on a nickel-aluminide--one of the intermetallic alloys that basically didn't go anywhere commercially interesting--and went off in other directions anyway. But he established an ice lab and it's really an interesting material (which in the 80s, the US military was really interested in for obvious reasons).