Professor R. Ramesh awarded the James C. McGroddy Prize.
Professor R. Ramesh shares the 2010 James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials from the American Physical Society for "groundbreaking contributions in theory and experiment that have advanced the understanding and utility of multiferroic oxides".

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Professor T. N. Narasimhan has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award (2010).
Professor T. N. Narasimhan has been awarded the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Groundwater Resources Association of California..

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Professor E. Haller awarded the 2010 TMS John Bardeen Award (Sept. 2009).
Professor E. Haller has been awarded the TMS John Bardeen Award for 2010.

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Professor J. Evans has been awarded the honor of being made a TMS Fellow (2010).
Professor J. Evens has been awarded the honor of being made a TMS Fellow 2010.

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Professor D. de Fontaine has been awarded the TMS Hume Rothery Award (2010).
Professor D. de Fontaine has been awarded the 2010 TMS Hume Rothery award..

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Professor T. Xu has been awarded the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (May 10, 2009).
Professor T. Xu has been awarded the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award for her work in: Directed Assemblies of Nanocomposites for Energy Storage.

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Professor R. Ritchie is elected to the American Ceramic Society (May 10, 2009).
Professor R. Ritchie has been selected by the International Congress on Fracture (ICF) as the inagural recipient of the ICF Alan Cottrell Gold Medal that honors Cottrell's scientific contributions to the fundamental understanding of fracture in structural materials.

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Professor R. Ritchie is elected to the American Ceramic Society (April 1, 2009).
Professor R. Ritchie is elected as a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society.

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Professor A. Majumdar is appointed as LBL Associate Director (March 20, 2009).
Professor A. Majumdar, currently the Director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at the Lawrence Berkekeley National Lab, is appointed as the Associate Director for Energy and Environment at LBNL, effective March, 2009.

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Professor R. Ritchie wins awards (March 7, 2009).
Professor R. Ritchie wins the year-2010 Edward DeMille Campbell Memorial Lectureship Award from ASM-International, and is elected to the Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

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Professors A. P. Alivisatos and R. Ramesh are elected to MRS Fellow (March 5, 2009).
Profs. R. Ramesh and A. P. Alivisatos are elected to MRS Fellow. Congratulations! Click here for a full list of MRS Fellow elected in 2009.

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Click here for a photo from the MSEA Christmas Party.

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UC appoints Prof. Paul Alivisatos interim director of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Jan. 22, 2009).
University of California President Mark G. Yudof today appointed Prof. Paul Alivisatos interim director of the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is managed by the university. Alivisatos will replace Steve Chu, former director of the laboratory, who was sworn in as U.S. Secretary of Energy on Jan. 21. Prof. Alivisatos' research can be found at http://www.mse.berkeley.edu/bio_alivistatos.htm.

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Professor Miquel Salmeron is MSD new director at LBNL (Dec, 2008).
Professor Miquel Salmeron is appointed as the new Materials Sciences Division director at LBNL. Details of His research can be found at http://stm.lbl.gov/Salmeron_group/home.html.

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Professor and Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau joins the MSE Department (July, 2008).
Professor and U. C. Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau joins the MSE Department with a joint appointment. Details of His research can be found at http://www.mse.berkeley.edu/bio_birgeneau.htm.

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Professor Robert Ritchie wins the 2010 Robert Franklin Mehl Award & Institute of Metals Lectureship from TMS (August 06, 2008).
The Robert Franklin Mehl Award & Institute of Metals Lectureship from the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society recognizes an outstanding scientific leader by inviting him/her to present a lecture at the Society's Annual Meeting on a technical subject of particular interest to members in the materials science and application of metals program areas.

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Professor Didier DeFontaine is the 2010 winner of the TMS William Hume-Rothery Award from TMS (August 06, 2008).
The William Hume-Rothery Award from the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society recognizes a scientific leader for exceptional scholarly contributions to the science of alloys by inviting him/her to be an honored presenter at the William Hume-Rothery Memorial Symposium. The awardee participates with the Alloy Phase Committee in organizing this symposium held in conjunction with the TMS Annual Meeting approximately two years following selection.

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Professor Miquel Salmeron wins the Medard W. Welch Award from the American Vacuum Society (July 10, 2008).
The Medard W. Welch Award from AVS recognizes and encourages outstanding research in the fields of interest to AVS. Prof. Salmeron wins this award for "seminal contributions to the development of surface characterization techniques usable in a variety of environments and their application to catalysis, tribology and related surface phenomena".

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Professor Andrew Minor joins the MSE Department (July 1, 2008).
The Department of Materials Science and Engineering is very pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Andrew Minor as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Minor is a Principal Investigator at the National Center for Electron Microscopy, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he will hold a joint appointment. Dr. Minor received a B.A. in Mechanical Engineering and Economics from Yale University, and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from UC Berkeley. His research group uses advanced electron microscopy-based materials characterization to investigate both organic and inorganic materials. They focus on nanomechanical size effects, characterization of soft materials, and novel in situ TEM methods for materials science research. More information about his research group can be found at: http://www.mse.berkeley.edu/groups/aminor.

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Professor Ramesh appointed as the Associate Chair of the MSE Department (June 20, 2008).
Effective July 1, 2008, Prof. R. Ramesh is appointed as the Associate Chair of the MSE Department.

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Congratulations MSE graduation class of 2008! Click here for the photo! (May, 2008).

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Professors Haller and Morris appointed as MRS Fellows (April 18, 2008).
Professors Eugene E. Haller and J. (Bill) W. Morris are elected to the inaugural class of MRS Fellows. This is a distinghushed and highly selective honor. The number of new Fellows admitted each year is capped at 0.2% of the current total MRS membership. MRS cites Prof. Morris "for seminal contributions in the study of the relationship between microstructure and properties of metallic alloys, and for sustained excellence in undergraduate and graduate teaching", and Prof. Haller "for pioneering, sustained, imaginative and creative contributions to the basic science and applications of semiconductors".

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Professor Ramesh wins MRS Turnbull Award (November, 2007).
Professor Ramesh wins MRS Turnbull Award. The Turnbull Lecturer Award recognizes the career of a scientist who has made outstanding contributions to understanding materials phenomena and properties through research, writing, and lecturing, as exemplified by David Turnbull. Prof. Ramesh's citation reads: For his pioneering contributions to the materials science of complex oxide heterostructures and nanostructures, including multiferroics, ferroelectrics,and magnetoresistive oxides; and for his enthusiasm and leadership in conveying the excitement of this field to a broad audience. Professor Ramesh joins the ranks of prior departmental winners of the Turnbull Award, Profs. De Fontaine and Haller.

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Professor Yang wins NSF Waterman Award (November, 2007).
Professor Peidong Yang wins NSF Waterman Award. Professor Yang of Chemistry and Materials Science is the 2007 winner of the National Science Foundation Alan T. Waterman Award, which is given to an outstanding young scientist (under the age of 35) who is revolutionizing research in a field of science or engineering supported by NSF. Peidong was nominated for his pioneering research in nanotechnology, specifically involving nanowires - flexible strips one-thousandth the width of a human hair that show promise for a range of high-technology devices, ranging from tiny lasers and computer circuits to inexpensive solar panels and biological sensors.

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Professor Morris elected to NAE (April, 2007).
Professor J. W. (Bill) Morris, Jr. has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2007. Membership in the National Academy is considered one of the nation's highest honors for scientists and engineers, and recognizes their extraordinary achievements and contributions in original research. The MSE Department now has seven NAE members and two NAS members among its regular and emeritus faculty.

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Professor Ting Xu joins MSE (January, 2007).
The Department of Materials Science and Engineering is delighted to announce the addition of Dr. Ting Xu as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Xu currently holds a joint postdoctoral appointment in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and the Cold Neutrons for Biology and Technology (CNBT) Partnership Program at NIST. Dr. Xu’s current research focuses on the design, synthesis, and characterization of de novo designed peptides (artificial proteins) that will serve building blocks for functional biomaterials or be incorporated into block copolymer based nanoporous thin films. Dr. Xu’s earlier Ph.D. research, under the guidance of Professor Thomas P. Russell in the Department of Polymer Science and Engineering at the University of Massachusetts, centered on controlling the nanostructure in diblock copolymer thin films using external fields (e.g electric, surface, shear and solvent fields). Dr. Xu will join the MSE faculty on a full-time basis in January 2007. Her future research interests are to fundamentally understand the hierarchical self-assembly of complex systems involving artificial proteins, block copolymers and nanoparticles and apply it toward generating functional materials exhibiting novel electronic, photonic and biological properties.

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Professor Junqiao Wu joins MSE (August, 2006).
The Department of Materials Science and Engineering is very pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Junqiao Wu as an Assistant Professor. Professor Junqiao Wu received a B.S. from Fudan University and a M.S. from Peking University, China, both in physics. He obtained a Ph.D. degree in Applied Science and Technology from the University of California, Berkeley for work on nitride semiconductors and highly mismatched semiconductor alloys. As a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, he worked on phase transitions in transition metal oxide nanomaterials. He began his faculty appointment in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley in 2006. His honors include the Berkeley Fellowship and the 29th Ross N. Tucker Memorial Award.
The Wu group explores novel properties and applications of correlated electron materials with reduced dimensions, phase transitions at the nanometer scale, and optoelectronics and photovoltaics of semiconductor nanostructures.

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Professor Miquel Salmeron joins MSE (January, 2006).
LBNL Senior Scientist and surface science expert, Miquel Salmeron, has joined the MSE Department as an Adjunct Professor. Miquel, who is Director of Imaging and Manipulation of Nanostructures at LBNL's Molecular Foundry, brings his world leading research on the atomic level origin of the mechanical, physical and chemical properties of matter in small dimensions.

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