External Advisory Committee
David Aspens
David Aspnes is a Distinguished University Professor and Alumni Distinguished Graduate Professor in Physics at North Carolina State in Raleigh, NC. He received his Ph.D. in 1965 from the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign (UIUC). Following a year as a postdoctoral research associate at UIUC and another at Brown University, he joined Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, as a member of the technical staff. In 1984, he became Head of the Interface Physics Department of the Bellcore, the part of Bell Laboratories that went with the operating companies in the AT&T divestiture. He joined NC State University as a Professor of Physics in 1992, and was named Distinguished University Professor of Physics in 1999. Aspnes is best known for his experimental and theoretical work on the development and application of optical techniques for the analysis of materials, thin films, interfaces, and structures. These optical techniques include theory and practice of spectroscopic ellipsometry, modulation spectroscopy, reflectance-difference spectroscopy, and materials-and interface-analysis using linear and nonlinear optics. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1998, and has received the 1996 Frank Isakson Prize of the American Physical Society, the 1998 Medard W. Welch Award of the American Vacuum Society.
Clyde L. Briant
Clyde L. Briant is Otis E. Randall University Professor and Professor of Engineering at Brown University. Briant received his Doctor of Engineering Science degree in materials science from Columbia University in 1974, and he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania from 1974 to 1976. He served of Dean of Engineering at Brown from 2003-2006 and he served as Vice President for Research from 2006-2013. Prior to joining the Brown faculty in 1994, Briant worked at the GE Research and Development Center (1976-1994). His primary research interest has been in the area of structural materials and more recently has moved into the field of science and engineering studies. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Mark H. Ellisman
Mark H. Ellisman is Professor of Neurosciences and Bioengineering at the University of California San Diego. He is also the Director of National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR), and he has served as the founding director of the UCSD Center for Research in Biological Systems (CRBS) since 1996. Ellisman earned his Ph.D. in in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology from the University of Colorado, Boulder. In 1977, he began his tenure as a professor of neurosciences and bioengineering at UCSD. Ellisman established NCMIR in 1988 to achieve greater understanding of the structure and function of the nervous system by developing 3D light and electron microscopy methods. As a founding fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, Ellisman has received numerous awards including the Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigatory Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Creativity Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). In 2002, he was appointed to the National Advisory Council of the NIH National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) and to the Physics Division Review Committee of the Department of Energy, Los Alamos National Laboratory. His research promotes the development and application of advanced imaging technologies to obtain new information about cell structure and function, structural correlates of nerve impulse conduction and axonal transport, cellular interactions during nervous system regeneration, cellular mechanisms regulating transient changes in cytoplasmic calcium, and aging in the central nervous system.
John W. Hutchison
John W. Hutchinson is a renowned scholar in the field of applied mechanics, and has made seminal contributions to the mechanics of structures and mechanics of materials. He is a recipient of the Timoshenko Medal. He earned his doctoral degree from Harvard University in 1963, advised by Bernard Budiansky. He has been the author of very important and famous works about solid and fracture mechanics, among the others the so-called HRR (Hutchinson-Rice-Rosengren) theory of elastic-plastic stress fields in power hardening materials, posing a miliar stone for the modern Non-Linear (or Elasto-Plastic) Fracture Mechanics (NLFM, EPFM, Hutchinson, 1968, and Rice and Rosengren, 1968). The starting point is the monotonic stress-strain constitutive law of many ductile solids undergoing uniaxial tension, i.e. the well-known Ramberg-Osgood law. Hutchinson was awarded the Ludwig-Prandtl-Ring from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Luft- und Raumfahrt (German Society for Aeronautics and Astronautics) for “outstanding contribution in the field of aerospace engineering” in 2012. In 2013, he was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and Engineering.
Michael Lawrence Klein
Michael Lawrence Klein is Laura H. Carnell Professor of Science and Director of the Institute for Computational Molecular Science in the College of Science and Technology at Temple University in Philadelphia, USA. He was previously the Hepburn Professor of Physical Science in the Center for Molecular Modeling at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was the director of the PENN NSF MRSEC for ~20 years. Klein obtained a B.Sc. from the University of Bristol in 1961, followed by a Ph.D. in 1964. He was a researcher at the National Research Council 1968-1987, and joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1987. Klein’s research in computational chemistry, particularly statistical mechanics, intermolecular interactions, and modeling of condensed phases and biophysical systems, is among the most highly cited in the field. He received the Aneesur Rahman prize in 1999, which is the highest honor given by the American Physical Society for work in computational physics, and was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 2009.
Alexandra Navrotsky
Alexandra Navrotsky is a physical chemist in the field of nanogeoscience and a Distinguished Professor at University of California at Davis. She received her Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1967. Upon completing her degree, she worked a postdoctoral researcher in Germany and then continued her postdoctoral work at Pennsylvania State University in 1968. She is an elected member of the United States National Academy of Sciences (NAS). She was a board member of the Earth Sciences and Resources division of the NAS from 1995 until 2000. In 2005, she was awarded the Urey Medal, by the European Association of Geochemistry. In 2006, she was awarded the Harry H. Hess Medal, by the American Geophysical Union. She is currently the director of NEAT ORU (Nanomaterials in Environment, Agriculture, and Technology Organized Research Unit), a primary program in nanogeoscience.
Carlo Pantano
Carlo Pantano is Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Pennsylvania State University. He received his B.S. Degree in engineering science from Newark College of Engineering in 1972, and the M.E. and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Florida in 1974 and 1976. After 3 years at the University of Dayton, he joined Pennsylvania State University. In 1991, he created the Materials Characterization Lab and served as the Director for 10 years. In 1998, he was appointed the Director of the Materials Research Institute, a new University-level unit created to promote interdisciplinary materials research, science and engineering which he led thru 2014. He was awarded the 2005 George W. Morey award for outstanding technical contributions to the field of glass science and technology. His research interests include glass surfaces, interfaces, and coatings; computer modeling of surface structure and water adsorption; silane monolayers and polymer coatings on glass (stress) corrosion, weathering and strength; wet and dry etching; silica, silicates, phosphates and germanates; melting, sol/gel, sputtering, EBPVD and CVD; surface and thin film characterization with XPS, SIMS, AFM, FTIR and IGC; and nano-mechanical properties of surfaces and coatings. Research has applications to biotechnology, photovoltaics, sensors, microarrays and MEMS.
Louis Terminello
Louis Terminello is the Chief Scientist for Fundamental & Computational Sciences Directorate (FCSD) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). He earned his Ph.D. in physical science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1988 and his bachelor’s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has over 160 publications on synchrotron radiation studies of nanostructured and interfacial materials. Terminello also has several patents awarded or pending, served on numerous scientific advisory and review committees, organized several national and international conferences (including the 2006 Materials Research Society Fall meeting with over 5000 attendees), and edited 6 books in the field of materials characterization using synchrotron radiation. Prior to joining PNNL, Terminello worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. There he held leadership positions since 1995, most recently serving as the Deputy Associate Director for Programs. His research interests include solid-state physics, atomic and electronic structure determination of novel materials using synchrotron radiation photoemission and absorption, and photoelectron holography and valence-band imaging studies of electronic material surfaces and interfaces. He is an authority on determining the atomic, electronic and chemical characteristics of materials used in nuclear, energy and other applications.