Bao, Dunn, Mhaisalkar, Schwaiger, and Shinde to chair 2019 MRS Spring Meeting

The Meeting chairs for the 2019 Materials Research Society (MRS) Spring Meeting are Yuping Bao (The University of Alabama, USA), Bruce Dunn (University of California, Los Angeles, USA), Subodh Mhaisalkar (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore), Ruth Schwaiger (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology–Institute for Applied Materials, Germany), and Subhash L. Shinde (University of Notre Dame, USA). The Meeting will be held April 22–26, 2019, in Phoenix, Ariz.

Yuping Bao is an associate professor of chemical and biological engineering at The University of Alabama, USA. She received her BS degree in chemistry from East China University of Science and Technology, China, and then earned her master’s degree in nanomaterials research in the Physics Department of Tongji University, China. She received her PhD dual degree in materials science and engineering and in nanotechnology from the University of Washington, USA, in 2006.

After two and half years of postdoctoral research in the Center for Integrated Nanotechnology at Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA, Bao joined the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, in 2008. In 2009, she was named a Reichhold-Shumaker Fellow and became an adjunct faculty member in biological science. Her current research interests are focused on rationally designed nanomaterials for biomedical applications, such as drug delivery and magnetic resonance imaging. She is a recipient of the 2010 Ralph Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award and a National Science Foundation Career Award in 2012. She currently serves on the editorial board of the journal Biological Trace Element Research. She also serves on the MRS Government Affairs Committee.

Bruce Dunn is the Nippon Sheet Glass Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He received his PhD degree in 1974 from UCLA.

Previously, he was a staff scientist at the General Electric Research and Development Center, USA. His research interests concern the synthesis of inorganic and organic/inorganic materials, and characterization of their electrical, optical, biological, and electrochemical properties. A continuing theme in his research is the use of sol-gel methods to synthesize materials with designed microstructures and properties. His recent work on electrochemical energy storage includes three-dimensional batteries and pseudocapacitor materials.

Among the honors he has received are a Fulbright Research Fellowship, the Orton Lectureship from the American Ceramic Society, two awards from the US Department of Energy for outstanding research in materials science, and invited professorships in France, Japan, and Singapore. He is a Fellow of MRS and the American Ceramic Society, and a member of the World Academy of Ceramics. In addition to serving on the Board of Reviewing Editors at the journal Science, he is a member of the editorial boards of the journals Advanced Energy Materials, Solid State Ionics, Advanced Electronic Materials, and Journal of the American Ceramic Society.

Subodh Mhaisalkar is the Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He is also the Executive Director of the Energy Research Institute at NTU (ERI@N), a pan-University multidisciplinary research institute for innovative energy solutions. ERI@N has 225 full-time staff and 154 PhD scholarships, and has set up more than 60 industry partnership projects, including joint laboratories (on the NTU campus) with global industry leaders. He received his bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India, and his MS and PhD degrees from The Ohio State University, USA.

Prior to joining NTU in 2001, Mhaisalkar had more than 10 years of research and engineering experience in the microelectronics industry, where he held senior managerial positions at STATS Singapore, National Semiconductor, and the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology. His areas of expertise and research interests include semiconductor technology, perovskite solar cells and light-emitting diodes, printed electronics, and energy storage.

Ruth Schwaiger is a senior scientist at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology– Institute for Applied Materials (KIT) and head of the Nanomechanics Research Group, Germany. She studied physics at TU Wien, Austria; conducted her doctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research, Germany; and obtained her PhD degree in materials science in 2002 from the University of Stuttgart, Germany.

After postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Schwaiger joined the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Germany, in 2004 and then moved to a management consult-mgfirmm2007. She joined KIT in 2010. Her research interests range from deformation mechanisms in metals and the mechanics of small-scale materials and structures to biomechanics and mechanical metamaterials. Her research aims to develop a mechanism-based understanding of deformation and failure of materials, and to determine principles for the design toward improved strength and damage tolerance. Schwaiger has (co-)authored more than 50 publications, given more than 30 invited presentations at conferences, and co-organized 10 international symposia and workshops.

Subhash L. Shinde joined the Center for Sustainable Energy at the University of Notre Dame (ND Energy) in November 2016 as the associate director. He leads ND Energy’s research initiatives in research and global development and corporate programs. He received his BTech and MTech degrees in metallurgical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India, and his PhD degree in materials science from Stanford University, USA.

Previously, he held various leadership positions in research for 18 years in the Microelectronics Division of the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA. He was on the research staff and then a manager of the Concentrating Solar Technologies Group at Sandia National Laboratories, USA, from 2004 until 2012. Shinde has more than 40 publications, including three edited books and a book chapter. He holds more than 65 US patents and another 18 internationally. His research interests include advanced materials for efficient energy-conversion applications. He has given several invited presentations, and has been a symposium organizer for several MRS symposia.