People
MRL Faculty Profiles

Gui Bazan received his Ph.D. from MIT in Inorganic Chemistry in 1991. After a postdoctoral appointment at Caltech, he joined the Chemistry Department at the University of Rochester in 1992. He joined UCSB in 1998. His current research programs are concerned with the photophysics and morphology of the organic solid state and the polymerization of olefins via homogenous catalysis. Of particular interest are strategies that control the organization of intermediate size organic chromophores in the solid state. Such methods are desirable since the relative orientation and distance of conjugated molecules control important useful properties such as conductivity and the photon-processing ability of the material. One ultimate goal is to program the maximum "best" morphology from the organization of atoms in the individual molecules. In the area of catalysis, the Bazan group is optimizing the multiple catalysts approach to highly branched polyethylene.
Tony Cheetham obtained his D. Phil. at the University of Oxford in 1971 and was a member of the Chemistry faculty at Oxford from 1974-91. In 1991 he moved to the University of California at Santa Barbara to become Professor in the Materials and Chemistry Departments, and, in 1992, Director of the newly-created Materials Research Laboratory. He has a long-standing interest in the development of tools for the structural elucidation of materials, including diffraction techniques employing synchrotron X-rays and neutrons, as well as solid state NMR and computer simulation methods. In the context of inorganic materials, his primary interests are in the synthesis and properties of novel open-framework systems, especially phosphates, and the study of transition metal oxides. Honors include election to a Fellowship of the Royal Society, London (1994), a Chaire Internationale de Recherche, Blaise Pascal, Paris (1997-1999), and Associate Fellowship of the Third World Academy of Sciences (1999).
Steve DenBaars is a Professor of Materials and Electrical Engineering and the Associate Director of the Solid State Lighting Center at the University of California Santa Barbara. He received his PhD. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, in 1988 under the direction of Prof. P.D. Dapkus. From 1988-1991 Prof. DenBaars was a member of the technical staff at Hewlett-Packard's Opoelectroncis Division involved in the growth and fabrication of visible LEDs. His current research interests are in metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) of III-V compound semiconductor materials and devices. Specific research interests include growth of wide-bandgap semiconductors (GaN based), and their application to Blue LEDs and lasers and high power electronic devices. This research has lead to the first US university demonstration of a Blue GaN laser diode and over 7 patents pending on GaN growth and processing. He is the lead investigator of the ARPA funded Multi-univerisity Nitride Consortium which will develop and transfer GaN technology to industry. In 1994 he received a NSF Young Investigator award. He has Authored or Co-Authored over 130 technical publications, 100 conference presentation, and 10 patents.
Glenn Fredrickson obtained his Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1984 and subsequently joined AT&T Bell Laboratories, where he was named Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff in 1989. In 1990 he moved to the University of California at Santa Barbara, joining the faculties of the Chemical Engineering and Materials Departments. He served as Chair of Chemical Engineering from 1998-2001 and is currently the Director of the Mitsubishi Chemical Center for Advanced Materials (MC-CAM), Associate Director of the MRL, and the Director of the Complex Fluids Design Consortium (CFDC). Professor Fredrickson has a long-standing interest in the statistical mechanics of complex fluids, including polymers, colloids, and glasses. His work is primarily theoretical and computational and has been most recently focused on field-based computer simulation strategies for anticipating the bulk and interfacial self-assembly of multi-component polymers. Honors include a NSF-PYI Award, a Sloan Fellowship, the Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the Dillon Medal of the American Physical Society, the Alpha Chi Sigma Award of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and election to the National Academy of Engineering.
Art Gossard received his bachelor's degree in physics from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in physics from University of California, Berkeley. He is professor of Materials and Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of California, Santa Barbara. His research involves the growth of artificially structured materials by molecular beam epitaxy. His special interests are molecular beam epitaxy, the growth of quantum wells and superlattices and their applications to high performance electrical and optical devices and the physics of low-dimensional structures. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the IEEE, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a recipient of the 1983 Oliver Buckley Condensed Matter Physics prize and recipient of the 2001 James McGroddy New Materials prize of the American Physical Society and the 2005 John Bardeen award of the TMS.
Song-I Han received her Doctoral Degree in Natural Sciences (Dr.rer.nat) from Aachen University of Technology, Germany, in 2001. She was awarded with the first Raymond Andrew Prize of the Ampere Society for an outstanding PhD thesis in magnetic resonance. She pursued her postdoctoral studies at the Max-Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz, Germany and the University of California, Berkeley under the sponsorship of the Feodor Lynen Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Dr. Han joined the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCSB in 2004. The key aspect of her research interest is the development of a technique called DNP-NMR, which will transform the most information rich spectroscopic technique NMR into a fast spectroscopic method. The DNP principle uses highly populated unpaired electron spins, which signal is effectively translated into NMR signal, so that the nucleus of choice in the molecule or material of interest is polarized to deliver several orders of magnitude sensitivity gain. This makes “real-time” monitoring of atomic details of biochemical processes such as protein folding, polymerization reactions and aggregation feasible.
Helen Hansma came to UCSB in 1972 and to the Physics Department in 1988. She has a B.A. in Chemistry from Earlham College, M.A. in Biochemistry from UC Berkeley, and Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from UCSB. Her previous research areas range from the chemistry of zinc-azine coordination compounds to the ionic mechanisms for membrane excitation in Paramecium. This diversity has served her well in her present research on new applications for atomic force microscopy (AFM), ranging from teflon films to biomaterials, including lipid films and synaptic vesicles, DNA and DNA-protein interactions, laminin and other macromolecules of the basement membrane, and bacterial biofilms. Two of her current research interests are high-throughput AFM and 'force spectroscopy' AFM of spider-silk molecules, which are nature's 'bio-steel.' Her other professional activities include several invited talks each year and service for NSF, NIH and NASA.
Craig J. Hawker received a B.Sc. degree and University Medal in chemistry from the University of Queensland in 1984 and a Ph.D. in bioorganic chemistry from the University of Cambridge in 1988 under the supervision of Prof. Sir Alan Battersby. Jumping into the world of polymer chemistry, he undertook a post-doctoral fellowship with Prof. Jean Fréchet at Cornell University from 1988 to 1990 and then returned to the University of Queensland as a Queen Elizabeth II Fellow from 1991 to 1993. In 1993, he became a research staff member at IBM Almaden Research Center, where he remained until moving to the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2004. Since 2001, he has also been adjunct professor of chemistry at the University of Queensland. Hawker has authored or coauthored 30 patents and more than 190 research publications. He has received numerous awards including the ACS Polymeric Materials: Science & Engineering (PMSE) Division's Arthur K. Doolittle Award in 1997, the International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry's Young Scientists Award in 2000, the ACS Polymer Chemistry Division's Carl S. Marvel Award in Creative Polymer Chemistry in 2001, and the Cooperative Research Award from PMSE in 2003. Most recently he was awarded the 2005 ACS Award in Applied Polymer Chemistry and the 2005 Dutch Polymer Award. Hawker is also editor of the Journal of Polymer Science, Part A: Polymer Chemistry, and a member of the editorial boards of several other journals.
Alan Heeger obtained his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1961 and was a member of the Physics department at the University of Pennsylvania from 1962-82. In 1982 he moved to the University of California at Santa Barbara to become Professor of Physics. Professor Heeger was one of the founding members of the Materials Department and currently holds a joint appointment (Physics and Materials). Professor Heeger was the co-founder (with Prof. F. Wudl) and Director of the Institute for Polymers and Organic Solids at UCSB from 1983 until 1999. Professor and his colleagues at the MRL have done pioneering research in the area of semiconducting and metallic polymers. This class of novel materials has the electrical and optical properties of semiconductors and metals in combination with the processing advantages and mechanical properties of polymers. His current research interests lie in the area of transport in semiconducting polymers and light emission from semiconducting polymers (both photoluminescence and electroluminescence). His research group focuses on issues related to the fundamental electronic structure of this novel class of materials and carries out studies of light-emitting diodes (LEDs), light-emitting electrochemical cells (LECs), and lasers, all fabricated from semiconducting (conjugated) polymers. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2000), the Oliver E. Buckley Prize for Condensed Matter Physics (1983), the Balzan Prize for the Science of New Materials (1995), the President’s Medal for Distinguished Achievement from the University of Pennsylvania (2001), the Chancellor’s Medal from the University of California, Santa Barbara (2001), and a number of honorary doctorates. He is a member of the National Academy of Science (USA) (2001), the National Academy of Engineering (USA) (2002), and a foreign member of the Korean Academy of Science (2001).
G. M. "Bud" Homsy obtained all his degrees in Chemical Engineering, (B.S., UC Berkeley, MS/PhD, U. Illinois). After a NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship at Imperial College, London, he joined the Chemical Engineering faculty at Stanford University in Fall, 1970, where he taught for 30 years before joining the faculty of Mechanical Engineering at UC Santa Barbara. His field of research is fluid mechanics and hydrodynamic stability. He has made contributions in the areas of stability of time dependent flows; flow through porous media, including pore level modeling and viscous fingering; thermal convection; fluid-particle systems, including fluidized beds and suspensions; interfacial flows, including Marangoni flows, coating flows, electrohydrodynamics, and contact line dynamics; and non-Newtonian flows. He has held many professional positions, including Vice-Chair and Chair of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics, two terms as Department Chair at Stanford, Chairman of the Board of USRA, and Associate Editorships of SIAM J. Applied Math and Physics of Fluids. He is a Fellow of the APS, a Bing Fellow at Stanford University, and has been the Talbot Lecturer at UIUC, and the Batchelor Visitor at DAMTP, Cambridge. He is the recipient of the APS Fluid Dynamics Prize for 2004. He was the Principal Investigator for the production of "Multimedia Fluid Mechanics", Cambridge, (2001).
Jacob Israelachvili received his Ph.D. in Experimental Physics from the University of Cambridge (UK) in 1972 and joined UCSB in 1986. He has developed experimental techniques for directly measuring the forces between surfaces in vapors and liquids, including static (equilibrium) and dynamic (non-equilibrium) interactions at the molecular level. His current research covers various solid-liquid interfacial phenomena, measuring the physical properties of very thin films, and understanding the rheology and tribology of surfaces. This information is valuable for controlling colloidal and biological systems, and various industrial engineering processes. Israelachvili is the author of the text-book "Intermolecular and Surface Forces", published by Academic Press, a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Engineering, and a member of the NAS.
Luc Jaeger received a "Magistère" degree (M.S) in Chemistry and Biology from the University Louis Pasteur of Strasbourg in 1990, and his PhD in Structural Biochemistry and Biophysics from the same university in 1993. After postdoctoral studies at the Scripps Research Institute (La Jolla, CA), he worked as a CNRS research scientist at the "Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire" in Strasbourg, from 1995 to 2002. He joined as a faculty the department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCSB in 2002. He is also part of the Biomolecular Science and Engineering Program at UCSB. Research projects in Jaeger's lab are all related to RNA tectonics, a new LEGO game for supra-molecular chemists and biochemists. It refers to the construction of artificial RNA architectures with novel properties and takes advantage of the knowledge of folding and assembly rules governing the three-dimensional shape of complex natural RNA molecules. State-of-the-art RNA tectonics combines a broad range of theoretical and experimental approaches at the interfaces of chemistry, biology, and physics.
Ed Kramer received a B.Ch.E. Degree in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University in 1962 and a Ph.D. in Metallurgy and Materials Science from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1966. He was a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at Oxford before joining Cornell University in 1967 where he was appointed the Samuel B. Eckert Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in 1988. In 1997 he joined the UCSB faculty where he holds a joint appointment in Materials and Chemical Engineering. Professor Kramer's current research activities focus on polymer interfaces using a variety of depth profiling and microscopic imaging methods. His group is interested in the fracture of block copolymers and polymer interfaces, from a micromechanical and molecular viewpoint, the kinetics of grafting reactions and instabilities at polymer melt interfaces and the ordering of block copolymer thin films as templated by interfacial interactions and external fields. His honors include membership in the National Academy of Engineering, the High Polymer Physics Prize of the American Physical Society, and the Swimburne Award of the Institute of Materials (UK).
Fred Lange is the Chair of the Materials Department. He received his Ph.D. from the Pennsylvania State University in 1965, worked at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Research Establishment (to 1967), Westinghouse Research Laboratory as a Fellow Scientist (to 1976) and at Rockwell International Science Center as Group Manager and Principal Scientist (to 1986). At Rockwell, he was named Engineer of the Year (1980) for helping to solve the Space Shuttle tile problem. He joined the UCSB faculty in 1986 with a joint appointment as Professor of Materials and Professor of Chemical Engineering. Lange's principal research areas include designing microstructures with higher crack growth resistance, colloidal powder processing methods for net-shape forming, and chemical solution routes to synthesize epitaxial thin films. In 1992 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. In 1999 he was appointed ALCOA Professor of Materials at UCSB.
Jim Langer obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Birmingham, England in 1958 and was a member of the faculty of the Physics Department at Carnegie Mellon University from 1958 to 1982. In 1982 he moved to the University of California at Santa Barbara to become a Professor in the Physics Department and a member of the Institute for Theoretical Physics. He served as Director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics from 1989 to 1995. His primary research interests have been in the theory of nonequilibrium phenomena such as the kinetics of phase transitions, pattern formation in fluid dynamics and crystal growth, earthquakes, and - most recently - the dynamics of deformation and fracture in noncrystalline solids. Honors include membership in the National Academy of Sciences and the Oliver Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize of the American Physical Society. He was President of the American Physical Society in 2000 and Vice President of the National Academy of Sciences from 2001 to 2005.
Gary Leal received his Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University in 1969, and was a Professor of Chemical Engineering at Caltech from 1970-1989, including appointment as the Chevron Distinguished Professor in 1986. In 1989, he moved to UCSB, where he is currently serving as Chair of Chemical Engineering as well as Professor in the Departments of Chemical Engineering, Materials and Mechanical Engineering. He is also currently the Editor of Physics of Fluids. He has had a long-standing interest in the behavior of complex fluids under flow, and, specifically the inter-relationship between flow, the microstructural state of the material, and its macroscopic properties. Current interests include the dynamics of entangled linear and branched polymeric liquids in strong flows; the flow behavior of liquid crystalline polymers and nematic suspensions; and the microscale dynamics of polymer blends, including reactive blending (coalescence and breakup phenomena) and blend rheology. Honors include election to the National Academy of Engineering (1987), The Bingham Medal of the Society of Rheology (2000), the Allan P. Colburn (1978) and William H. Walker (1993) Awards of the AIChE, and Fellow of the APS (1984).
Umesh Mishra who received a Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1984, joined the College's ECE Department in 1990 from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University. A recognized leader in the area of high-speed field effect transistors, Dr. Mishra has made major contributions at every laboratory and academic institution for which he has worked, including: Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California; the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; and General Electric, Syracuse, New York. His current research areas attempt to develop an understanding of novel materials and extend them into applications. He is the Director of the AFOSR PRET Center for Non-Stoichiometric Semiconductors and of the ONR MURI Center (IMPACT), which relates to the application of SiC and GaN based transistors for power amplification. In 1989 Dr. Mishra received the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation. In 1992 he received the Young Scientist of the Year Award from the International Symposium on GaAs and Related Compounds. He was elected as a Fellow of IEEE in 1995.
Dan Morse is the Director of the Army-sponsored UCSB-MIT-Caltech Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, and is UCSB's Wilcox Professor of Biotechnology, Biomolecular Science, Engineering and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. He received his B.A. degree in Biochemistry from Harvard, and his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He conducted postdoctoral studies in Molecular Genetics at Stanford University, and was appointed the Silas Arnold Houghton Associate Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School before joining the faculty as Professor of Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry of the University of California. His research is focused at the interface between molecular biology, biotechnology and materials science, with innovations in low-temperature nanofabrication of semiconductors for improvements in solar energy, lightweight batteries, IR detectors, ferroelectrics and bio-inspired adaptive optical materials. He recently was honored by Scientific American as one of the top 50 technology innovators of 2006 for his development of bioinspired kinetically controlled routes to semiconductor thin films and nanoparticles. He was selected the 7th Kelly Lecturer in Materials and Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and the 3M Lecturer in Chemistry and Materials at the University of Vancouver in Canada last year. Previous honors include election as a Fellow of the AAAS and the Smithsonian Institution; award of a Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health and a Faculty Research Award from the American Cancer Society; and recognition as Visiting Professor at the University of Paris and universities in Japan, Singapore and the UK. His students have received international recognition and awards in numerous symposia and international research meetings.
Quyen Nguyen obtained her Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from UCLA in 2001. She received several awards including the Dissertation Award from the University of California for outstanding performance in research and the Outstanding Innovative Research Award from the Advanced Materials. She was a research associate in the Department of Chemistry and the Nanocenter at Columbia University working with Louis Brus and Colin Nuckolls. She also spent time at IBM Research center at T. J. Watson (Yorktown Heights, NY) working with Richard Martel and Phaedon Avouris. She joined the faculty at UCSB in 2004. Her research focuses on understanding the photophysics and electronic properties of novel organic and metal-organic hybrid materials for applications in molecular electronics, transistors, photovoltaics, and sensors. Particularly, she is interested in how intermolecular interactions influence the photophysics, electronic properties, and charge transport in these materials both at the nanoscale and in the bulk using various scanning probe techniques and femto-second laser spectroscopy as well as how to control these intermolecular interactions to tune material properties. Her group seeks to correlate the structure-function-property relationship and also work closely with synthetic chemistry and theory groups to design new materials. She is the recipient of the 2005 ONR Young Investigator Award.obtained her Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from UCLA in 2001. She received several awards including the Dissertation Award from the University of California for outstanding performance in research and the Outstanding Innovative Research Award from the Advanced Materials. She was a research associate in the Department of Chemistry and the Nanocenter at Columbia University working with Louis Brus and Colin Nuckolls. She also spent time at IBM Research center at T. J. Watson (Yorktown Heights, NY) working with Richard Martel and Phaedon Avouris. She joined the faculty at UCSB in 2004. Her research focuses on understanding the photophysics and electronic properties of novel organic and metal-organic hybrid materials for applications in molecular electronics, transistors, photovoltaics, and sensors. Particularly, she is interested in how intermolecular interactions influence the photophysics, electronic properties, and charge transport in these materials both at the nanoscale and in the bulk using various scanning probe techniques and femto-second laser spectroscopy as well as how to control these intermolecular interactions to tune material properties. Her group seeks to correlate the structure-function-property relationship and also work closely with synthetic chemistry and theory groups to design new materials. She is the recipient of the 2005 ONR Young Investigator Award.
Dorothy Pak received her Ph.D. in 1996 from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. She came to UCSB as a postdoctoral scholar in the Marine Science Institute, where she has been a research scientist since 1997. Her scientific research focuses on marine proxy records of past climate change. She joined the MRL as Intern Coordinator in 1997 and became the Education Director in 2004. Her work at the MRL includes the design and implementation of science education outreach programs for K-12 students, teachers, undergraduates, and the public, with a particular focus on providing opportunities for diverse groups of participants.
Fyl Pincus obtained his Physics Ph.D. at UC Berkeley in 1961 and after an NSF post-doctoral fellowship at Saclay spent approximately 20 years in the Physics Department at UCLA. He then joined the Exxon Research and Engineering Laboratory in Annandale, NJ for 3 years before coming to UCSB in 1985 as Professor of Chemical Engineering. He now holds joint appointments in the Physics and Materials Departments. Professor Pincus is a condensed matter theorist who has worked in such diverse areas as magnetism, superconductivity, liquid crystals, and correlated electrons in organic conductors. His present activities are in soft condensed matter, particularly on problems motivated by biomolecular issues such as membrane-bound proteins and Coulomb effects in biomolecular assemblies. Honors include Joliot Curie Professor (ESPCI, 1981), John Simon Guggenheim Fellow (Orsay, 1975), Raymond & Beverly Sackler Distinguished Lecturer in Physics (Tel Aviv, 1988), High Polymer Physics Prize of the APS (Ford Prize, 1992), Chaire- Paris Sciences (ESPCI, 1999).
Cyrus Safinya is a Professor of Materials and Physics and an affiliated faculty of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UCSB. He has a B.S. in Physics and Mathematics (Bates College, 1975) and a Ph.D. in Physics (M.I.T., 1981). Current research is focused on developing synthetic carriers of genes for delivery applications and establishing a fundamental understanding of interactions between molecules of the cell which lead to supramolecular-assembly. He initiated the Gordon Conference (1990) and the Materials Research Society Meeting (1989) on Complex Fluids. He recently served on the National Academy of Sciences-NRC committee on Developing a Federal Materials Facilities Strategy (1999). He is on the editorial boards of Molecular Therapy (American Society of Gene Therapy) and the Publishing Program on Molecular & Chemical Sciences (Gordon-Breach). Honors include a Rothschild Foundation Fellowship (Curie Institute, 1994) and election as a Fellow of the American Physical Society (1994) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1997).
Martin Sagermann received his PhD (Dr.rer nat) in Biology from University of Heidelberg and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Germany, in 1995. He pursued his postdoctoral research at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at University of Oregon before joining the faculty at UCSB in 2002. Prior to his PhD Dr Sagermann was awarded a Fulbright exchange scholarship to the University of Oregon in 1987. The research interests of his laboratory include the design of peptide-based nano-switches, the engineering of protein-based responsive materials and the synthesis of bio-inspired composite and electronic materials.
Matthias Scheffler (PhD in Physics 1978) is the director of the Theory Department of the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin (since 1988) and Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Technical (since 1989) and the Free University Berlin (since 2001). He joined UCSB in 2004 as Distinguished Visiting Professor for Computational Material Science and Engineering. -- His research focuses on understanding fundamental aspects, starting from the electronic structure, of physical and chemical properties of surfaces, interfaces, clusters, and nanostructures. Present activities concern, but are not limited to, catalytic reactions at metal surfaces, atmospheric chemistry, liquid-solid interfaces in electrochemistry, magnetic semiconductors for spintronics, high-k dielectrics, and helix structures in proteins. Most studies begin with density-functional theory calculations, to attain atomic scale insight, and are then complemented with methods from thermodynamics or statistical mechanics, to enable understanding of important meso- and macroscopic phenomena acting e.g. under realistic environmental conditions. -- Honors include the M.A. Welch Award of the AVS Science and Technology Society 2003, the Max Born Prize of the British and German Physical Societies (2004), and a Visiting Professorship at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (since 2004). -- See also: www.fhi-berlin.mpg.de/th/th.html.
Ram Seshadri received his PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1995. After post-doctoral appointments at the Laboratoire CRISMAT, in Caen, France, and the Universität Mainz, Germany, he joined the Indian Institute of Science as an Assistant Professor in 1999. He moved to the Materials Department, UCSB in August 2002. Research in the Seshadri group encompasses a number of areas in the chemistry of inorganic materials, including new ways of preparing materials, magnetism in inorganic solids, oxide and chalcogenide nanoparticles, chemical patterning of inorganic materials on large (micrometer) length scales, seeking clues from nature on how to make new high-performance materials, and finally, using first principles electronic structure calculations to predict new material properties.
Joan Emma Shea received a B.Sc. in Chemistry at McGill University and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Following postdoctoral studies at the Scripps Research Institute, she joined the department of Chemistry and the James Franck Institute at the University of Chicago in 2000. Joan moved to her present position as an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCSB in 2001. Her research interests are in the fields of theoretical and computational biophysics. She is the recipient of the 2001 Cottage Hospital Biomedical Award, a 2002 NSF Career Award and a 2003 David and Lucile Packard Fellowship.
Nicola Spaldin obtained her B.A. and M.A. in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge, and her Ph.D. in Theoretical Chemistry from UC Berkeley. Before joining the UCSB Faculty in 1997, she was a postdoctoral researcher in the Applied Physics Department at Yale University. Her research in Computational Materials focuses on understanding the fundamental physics behind novel and potentially useful phenomena in new magnetic materials. Particular systems of interest include spintronic semiconductors, multiferroics (which are simultaneously ferromagnetic and ferroelectric) and magnetic piezoelectrics. She has a strong commitment to science education and outreach and is joint Director (with MRL Faculty member David Pine) of the UCSB IGERT program in optical materials. Honors include the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, Technology Review magazine's Young Innovator Award, an NSF POWRE Award, a Fulbright Scholarship and the Cray Research Fellowship in Computational Chemistry.
Jim Speck obtained his Sc.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989. In 1990 he joined the faculty at UC Santa Barbara. Speck's research focuses on the relationship between thin film electronic materials growth, microstructure, and the relation between microstructure and physical properties. Much of the experimental work focuses on MOCVD or MBE growth studies coupled with structural characterization by transmission and scanning electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction, and atomic force microscopy. Speck also has active research and collaborations in modeling microstructure and physical properties. His current work is largely centered on the wide bandgap nitrides, but he also has projects in to defect reduction in highly misfitting thin film semiconductors, the growth and microstructure of thin film oxides grown epitaxially on semiconductor or oxide substrates, and the structure and properties of epitaxial ferroelectric films. Speck is a member of the Materials Research Society, the American Physical Society, and the Microscopy Society of America.
Todd M. Squires is Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his B. S. in Physics and B. A. in Russian Literature from UCLA in 1995, studied as a Winston Churchill Scholar at Cambridge University to earn a Certificate of Advanced Study (Part III of the Mathematics Tripos), and as an NDSEG Fellow to earn a Ph. D. in Physics from Harvard in 2002. He spent three years at Caltech as a Lee A. Dubridge Postdoctoral Fellow and NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow, and joined the faculty at UCSB in 2005. His research interests involve a variety of topics involving small-scale fluid flows: microfluidics, colloidal hydrodynamics, electrokinetics and microrheology. Combining theoretical and experimental research, he seeks to understand the physical phenomena that occur on the micron scale, and to then harness such understanding towards novel applications in microfluidic and microrheological systems. His recent publications include a comprehensive review of microfluidic physics and the variety of ways in which it has been exploited.
Susanne Stemmer did her doctoral work at the Max-Planck-Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart (Germany) and received Ph.D. in 1995 from the University of Stuttgart. After working as a postdoctoral research associate at Case Western Reserve University and the Catholic University in Leuven (Belgium), she joined the Physics Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago as a Visiting Assistant Professor. In 1999, she joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Material Science at Rice University as Assistant Professor. She moved to UCSB in the summer of 2002. Her research focuses on structure-property relationships in functional oxide films, employing atomic resolution analytical and imaging techniques in transmission electron microscopy. Honors include a NSF Faculty Early Career Development award (2000).
Galen Stucky received his Ph.D. in 1962 from Iowa State University. After postdoctoral study at MIT, he held positions at the University of Illinois, Sandia National Laboratory and DuPont Central Research and Development Department before joining the UCSB faculty in 1985. His research currently focuses on organic/inorganic interface chemistry including the molecular assembly of material systems with integrated nanoscale to macroscale functionalities; the use of inorganic species and surfaces to define biomolecular assembly (e.g., transmembrane proteins) and biosystem processes (e.g. blood clotting cascade chemistry and hemostasis); conversion of methane (biomethane and stranded natural gas) to chemicals and fuels; meso- and nanostructured photovoltaic and photocatalytic composite systems; gradient materials and interfaces; and understanding Nature's routes to organic/inorganic bioassembly. Recent honors include a von Humboldt Senior US Scientist award (2000), the American Chemical Society Award in the Chemistry of Materials (2002), an IBM Faculty Award (2003), the IMMA (International Mesostructured Materials Association) Award (2004), election to fellowship in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2005), and appointment as E. Khashoggi Industries, LLC Professor in Letters and Science (2006-2010). He is also currently a Guest Professor at Fudan University in Shanghai and a Visiting Professor at Peking University in Beijing.
Matthew Tirrell is Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his undergraduate education in Chemical Engineering at Northwestern University and his Ph.D. in 1977 in Polymer Science from the University of Massachusetts. From 1977 to 1999 he was on the faculty of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota, where he served as head of the department from 1995 to 1999. His research has been in polymer surface properties including adsorption, adhesion, surface treatment, friction, lubrication and biocompatibility. He has co-authored about 250 papers and one book and has supervised about 60 Ph.D. students.

Professor Tirrell has been a Sloan and a Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award and has received the Allan P. Colburn, Charles Stine and the Professional Progress Awards from AIChE, as well as delivering its Institute Lecture in 2001. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a fellow of the American Physical Society. In 2003, he concluded more than two years of service as co-chair of the steering committee for the National Research Council report "Beyond the Molecular Frontier: Challenges for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering" published by the National Academy Press. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Cottage Health System.

Before joining the Materials Department in 2004, Chris Van de Walle was a Principal Scientist in the Electronic Materials Laboratory at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1986. He was a postdoctoral scientist at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York (1986-1988), a Senior Member of Research Staff at Philips Laboratories in Briarcliff Manor, New York (1988-1991), and an Adjunct Professor of Materials Science at Columbia University (1991). Prof. Van de Walle develops and employs first-principles techniques to model the structure and behavior of electronic materials. He has performed extensive studies of semiconductor interfaces (including the development of a widely used model for band offsets) and of defects and impurities in semiconductors, with particular emphasis on doping problems. In recent years he has been focusing his attention on wide-band-gap semiconductors, oxides, and on the behavior of hydrogen in materials. He has published over 200 research papers, has 15 patents, and has given 76 invited talks at international conferences. Prof. Van de Walle is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Senior Member of the IEEE, and the recipient of a Humboldt Award for Senior US Scientist and the David Adler Award from the APS. He has chaired three conferences and recently was Program Chair for the 27th International Conference on the Physics of Semiconductors.
Herb Waite is a professor in both the Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology at UCSB. He was awarded an AB from Harvard and a PhD in biochemistry from Duke University before doing post-doctoral studies at the Universities of Copenhagen and Toronto. Waite held faculty appointments at the University of Connecticut Medical Center and the University of Delaware before moving to UCSB in 1999. He has pioneered the discovery of underwater adhesive chemistries in marine organisms. Primary present research focus is on structure-function relationships in load- and impact-bearing biomolecular materials.
Fred Wudl received a B.S. (1964) and a Ph.D. (1967) degree from UCLA where his dissertation work was done with Professor Donald J. Cram. After postdoctoral research with R.B. Woodward at Harvard, he joined the faculty of the State University of New York at Buffalo. In 1972 he moved to AT&T Bell Laboratories and ten years later he moved to UCSB, where he served as Professor of Chemistry and Materials and Associate Director of the Institute for Polymers and Organic Solids. In 1997 he moved to UCLA to occupy the Dean M. Willard Chair of Chemistry and Materials (formerly Courtaulds Professor of Chemistry) and become director of the Exotic Materials Institute. He is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry as well as the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UCSB since June 2006 and was the director of the Materials Creation Training Program at UCLA, an NSF sponsored training grant. He is a Regional Editor (USA) of the Journal of Materials Chemistry and an Editorial Board member of the Journal of Materials Science. He has co-authored over 400 scientific papers and holds 13 U.S. patents. Professor Wudl has received numerous awards including Peter A. Leermakers Lecturer (twice, 1988, 1992), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1989), the William Rauscher Lecturer in Chemistry Award (Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute, 1992), ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (1993), Stouffer Award (USC, 1993), Arthur D. Little Award (1993), the Giulio Natta Medal of the Italian Chemical Society (1994), The Wheland Medal of University of Chicago (1994), ACS Award for Chemistry of Materials (1996), Alumnus of the Year Award from Los Angeles City College (1996), elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2001), Herbert Newby McCoy Award (UCLA, 2001) Honorary Doctors degree, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain (2004), Professor C.N.R. Rao Lecture Award of CRSI, Honorary Fellow, Council of the Chemical Research Society of India (2005). MIT, Merck-Karl Pfister Visiting Professor in Organic Chemistry (2006), Tolman Medal, ACS Southern California Section (2006).