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Leslie is an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering with affiliation in Materials Science at the Colorado School of Mines.  Her area of expertise is in mechanics of materials under extreme conditions.  She earned her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering and B.A. in Dance Performance from the University of Michigan, her M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and her Ph.D. in Aeronautics from the California Institute of Technology. Prior to her faculty position, Leslie was a postdoctoral researcher with K.T. Ramesh at the Johns Hopkins University. A former Lockheed Martin “Skunk Works” engineer, Leslie was a 2013 NASA Glenn Faculty Fellow, a recipient of an ONR Young Investigator Award, and an NSF CAREER award.  She is currently an Associate Editor for the journal Strain and a Technical Editor for Journal of Dynamic Behavior of Materials.