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L E T T E R F R O M T H E D E P A R T M E N T H E A D

Dear friends, Another six months have quickly passed since our last newsletter and Course III is moving ahead on many fronts.

Foremost is the very good news that we were highly successful in hiring three new faculty members: Assistant Professors Alfredo Alexander-Katz, Geoffrey Beach, and Michael Demkowicz—you can read more about their backgrounds and research interests in the next pages, but suffice to say, DMSE is very pleased and excited to have these outstanding new additions to our department.

There are a host of other good news items for Course III (despite the recent difficulties in the financial markets).

We now have an active MIT DMSE Alumni Club (the first such departmental alumni club in all of MIT). The department’s “design/build a working prototype competition,” MADMEC II, was highly successful again with a team of graduate students (“Heliotrope”) taking the $10,000 first-place prize for their prototype sun-tracking device for PVs. The LAM (Laboratory for Advanced Materials) planning is proceeding apace—the highly reputable architectural and design firm, Imai Keller Moore (IKM), has been selected and we are currently about to choose the construction firm, with plans to complete the project by late fall 2009 (see inside article and artist’s sketch of the LAM entrance). As of this past September, the “Reg Day” barbecue is back, complete with liquid nitrogen made ice cream. The students, faculty, and alums continue to win honors and distinctions. One of our undergrads, Richard Lin ’09, has been honored with the distinction of selection as a Marshall Fellow, the first Course III student so recognized since Terry Totmeier, ’91. Please read the great article on the Glass Lab. It is under the Infinite Corridor and is certainly a hot place to be!

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Ned Thomas and his grandson Adam.

Energy, the Environment, and Entrepreneurship (the three Big E’s) continue to engage folks throughout the department. Many students and faculty are making innovations in research in these areas and incorporating these topics in their teaching. It is also pleasing to see the emergence of an increasingly networked DMSE technical entrepreneurial community. The most recent event along these lines was “Innovation in Materials,” a forum at which Dr. Desh Deshpande and Professor Gene Fitzgerald discussed their experiences in the start-up world followed by a panel discussion with Professor Angela Belcher and Dr. David Danielson, recent Ph.D. grad and venture capitalist.

Quiz: how many of the National Academy’s twenty greatest achievements of the 20th century listed below will you use today? How many of these are enabled by materials?

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Electrification Automobile Airplane Water Supply and Distribution Electronics Radio and Television Agricultural Mechanization Computers Telephone Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Highways Spacecraft Internet Imaging Household Appliances Health Technologies Petroleum and Petrochemical Technologies Laser and Fiber Optics Nuclear Technologies High-performance Materials

Looking ahead at the future of DMSE, it is clear that in the early part of the 21st century, the world needs materials scientists and materials engineers. The National Academy of Engineering has recently identified fourteen Grand Challenges that humankind must address. One is making solar energy economical, another is restoring and improving urban infrastructure, another is providing access to clean water, yet another is engineering the tools of scientific discovery, another is developing carbon sequestration methods. Indeed, the fact that at least half of the fourteen challenges are strongly related to materials research underscores the continued critical role for DMSE education and research now and into the future. DMSE, with both the S and the E in our name, is well positioned to take on these challenges. Most importantly, within DMSE, the interplay between S and E is a major benefit to the community of innovators focused and energized by the need to solve these tremendous challenges.

DMSE will again host a Commencement Reception immediately following MIT’s Commencement exercises on June 5. Please join use to celebrate the latest DMSE alums!

The location is planned for Eastman Court outside Building 6, but final details will be confirmed closer to the date.

With warmest wishes,

Ned Thomas 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Building 6-113 Cambridge MA 02139-4307 617-253-5931. email: elt@mit.edu

Around DMSE N E W F A C U L T Y In fall 2008, we welcomed three new faculty members.

Professor Alf r e d o AlexanderKatz earned the B.S. in Physics from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in 1998, and the Ph.D. in Alfredo Alexander-Katz Physics from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 2004. His doctoral work focused on understanding the self-assembly of copolymers using novel field-theoretical methods.

Afterwards, he moved to Munich as a National Science Foundation (NSF) International Postdoctoral Fellow to study the dynamics of driven polymers. His work in Munich led to an important discovery that unraveled the mystery behind the process of blood clotting at high shear rates and opened new routes for the development of novel shear responsive materials. He later moved to the École Superieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielle in Paris as a Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique postdoctoral researcher to study charged polymer solutions and their self-assembly with direct applications to fuel cells.

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His current interests lie in the realm of self-assembly and dynamics of biological soft-materials using a combination of analytical theory and simulations. His group is particularly focused in designing novel polymer-like drug delivery carriers and understanding their response to chemical and physical stimuli. This work aims to enable a new generation of drug-delivery vectors that could target different areas of the body in a very specific manner and to provide a much deeper understanding of the processes of adhesion and targeting in flow. Other topics he is pursuing are understanding the supramolecular self-assembly of chlorophyls in the antennas of photosynthetic bacteria, the most efficient light-harvesting organisms on Earth, as well as studying the dynamics of driven soft systems in general. The research in Prof. Alexander-Katz’s group is highly interdisciplinary, at the interface of materials, biology, physics, chemistry, and medicine.

Professor Geoffrey Beach earned the B.S. in Physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1997 and the Ph.D. in Physics in 2003 from the University of California, San Diego, where he worked in the Center for Magnetic Recording Research to develop novel magnetic thin-film nanocomposites for ultrafast data storage applications. He then went on to the University of Texas at Austin as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Physics and the Texas Materials Institute where he made important discoveries in magnetization dynamics and spin-transfer torque in nanoscale magnetic structures.

Geoffrey Beach His current research interests focus on spin dynamics and “spin-electronics” in nanoscale magnetic materials and devices. Developing ways to store information more densely and to access it more quickly requires understanding the magnetization configurations in nanoscale structures and how they evolve in time. His work aims in part to understand and control spin excitations in magnetic materials whose dimensions approach fundamental magnetic length scales. One of the most exciting prospects in magnetism today is the possibility of electrical control of the magnetic state of a device, taking advantage of the coupling between spin and charge in a conducting ferromagnetic material. A major thrust of his research aims to harness the spin of the electron in magnetic materials to realize new approaches to spin-based storage and computation. Studying these processes requires the development of advanced instrumentation capable of probing magnetization dynamics at the shortest timescales and the smallest length scales. His group will work to develop new optical and electrical approaches to push the detection limits in order to enable development of new materials and structures to meet the information storage and processing demands of the future.

Professor Michael J. Demkowicz studies the fundamental processes by which solids change their atomic structure when driven far from equilibrium, e.g., when plastically deformed, bombarded by energetic ions, shocked, or exposed to environmental extremes such as rapidly Mike Demkowicz varying temperatures and pressures. Understanding how materials respond to these external stimuli can be used to create strategies for designing materials with desired properties from the atomic scale up. His recent work has focused on nanocomposites under intense irradiation. Traditional structural materials degrade and fail under these conditions, but certain nanocomposites contain high volume fractions of “super sink” interfaces that allow them to selfheal. By understanding how radiation damage is trapped and removed at such interfaces, Prof. Demkowicz aims to enable the design of a new class of radiation-tolerant materials that would make future nuclear reactors maximally safe, sustainable, and efficient.

R E C E N T A P P O I N T M E N T S Professor Yang Shao-Horn of the Department of Mechanical Engineering began a joint appointment with DMSE on July 1. Her research on materials for electrochemical energy storage and conversion strongly connects to many collaborative efforts with personnel in our Department. Professor Shao-Horn works with graduate students and postdocs on materials for electrochemical energy storage and conversion, which is centered on understanding and altering the crystal, surface, and electronic structures of thin films and nanomaterials, and applying fundamental understanding to design new materials for lithium storage and electrocatalysis of small molecules such as oxygen reduction, water splitting, and methanol oxidation. Her research on lithium storage materials is related to fundamental understanding on the origin of structural and surface instability of materials during cycling and strategies to alter structures and surfaces to increase lithium battery energy and to minimize energy loss over battery lifetime.

Another avenue of research pursued by Prof. Demkowicz is in understanding the mechanical and transport properties of glasses. This class of materials differs fundamentally from crystalline solids in that it possesses no long-range lattice periodicity. The behavior of glasses therefore not only poses a challenge to our current understanding of materials, but also offers opportunities for creating new materials that circumvent the drawbacks of traditional ones at the atomic level. Other areas of current interest include shock physics, nanoscale cellular materials (open and closed cell nanofoams), response of interfaces to severe plastic deformation, and the behavior of materials in extreme environments.

In August, Prof. Carl V. Thompson, ’76, succeeded Prof.

Lionel C. Kimerling, ’65, Ph.D. ’69, as director of the Materials Processing Center.

He is delighted to be working with two grad students and a UROP and soon plans to hire a post-doc with funding from Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Professor Lorna J. Gibson stepped down from the associate provost office in July. During a sabbatical in this coming academic year, Professor Gibson will co-author Cellular Solids: Biomechanics and Biomaterials with M.F. Ashby and B.A. Harley.

Professor Christine Ortiz is now director of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) MIT-Israel program. She spent the spring semester in Jerusalem, building relationships between researchers there and MIT and setting up programs for students. Learn more about the program at http://mit.edu/misti/mit-israel/.

Francesco Stellacci was named Paul M. Cook career development professor of materials science and engineering effective July 1. Alfredo Alexander-Katz holds the Toyota career development professorship. Geoffrey Beach holds the AMAX career development professorship.

Michael J. Demkowicz holds the John C. Chipman career development professorship.

Building Initiatives L A B O R A T O R Y F O R A D V A N C E D M A T E R I A L S Several years ago, viewers of PBS’s home-renovation program, This Old House, saw host Kevin O’Connor wandering down the Infinite Corridor, pausing in front of a door at the junction of Building 4 and Building 8, and saying something like “Materials Science and Engineering— I wonder what goes on in here.” Well, after our next renovation, he’ll be able to see for himself. Our planning of the new Laboratory for Advanced Materials, initiated by the Salapatas family’s generous donation to DMSE, is well underway.

Architects Imai Keller Moore have drafted initial plans on the layout of this new lab space that will span from the DMSE Nanomechanical Technology Laboratory to the Building 4 Café.

The LAM will serve as a highly visible and hightech welcoming point to our department on the Inifinite Corridor, as well as a vibrant research space for DMSE faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers to initiate new joint research efforts in interdisciplinary areas. The faculty are now finalizing the selection of new characterization and processing equipment, complementary to recent acquisitions in the Center for Materials Science and Engineering and other MIT Centers, that will enable our research groups to work together on new materials and processes for cross-cutting materials applications in challenging areas such as energy and the environment.

Proposed view of exterior of the Laboratory for Advanced Materials (LAM), pending approval and engineering studies. View is from base of the Building 4 staircase, looking east along the Infinite Corridor.

EDITOR:

Rachel A. Kemper, DMSE Communications Coordinator

ORIGINAL

DES IGN :

Marc Harpin, Rhumba

PRINTIN G :

Kirkwood Printing, Wilmington

ACKN OWLEDGME NTS:

Imai Keller Moore provided the LAM image and Prof. Van Vliet wrote the update on the lab’s progress. David Chandler of the News Office wrote the piece on MADMEC. Prof. Pam Vandiver and Dean Kim Vandiver provided text and photos for the article about the Glass Lab, as did Peter Houk and Phil Bailey. Many thanks to Nathaniel Berndt for proofreading.

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Events M A D M E C A team of three students who designed a system that could allow solar power panels to track the sun without motors or control systems won top honors—and a check for $10,000—in the finals of a competition aimed at developing innovative energy technologies.

This was the second annual MADMEC, Making And Designing Materials Engineering Contest, and it offered students six categories of engineering challenges related to producing innovative solutions for energy-related problems in the developing world. The contest is co-sponsored

by MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) and by corporate sponsors Dow Chemical, Saint Gobain and General Motors.

MADMEC trophy, made by Mike Tarkanian, Technical Instructor and Course III ’00, S.M. ’03. Cow design by Oat Creative. The base mimics the columns at MIT’s 77 Mass. Ave. entrance and contains an LED to illuminate the image which is laser etched in acrylic.

The team explored several different variations of the proposed system, using various materials including polymers and bimetallic strips. The system that shows the most promise, they said, mounts solar panels at the top of a curved arch made of a pair of metals such as aluminum and steel, which should be durable enough to withstand the weather

with little or no maintenance.

Winning team, Forrest Liau, George Whitfield, and Vyom Sharma, with Ned Thomas.

The competition began last spring, and all four of the teams that made it to the finals won prizes, ranging from the $10,000 top award to $1,000 for the fourth-place finishers. The teams worked closely with DMSE technical staff and mentors from Saint Gobain.

Heliotrope, the winning team, chose to imitate the way plants track the sun across the sky, by using the difference in temperature between shaded and sunny areas to change the properties of the material supporting solar photovoltaic cells. The system, once built, is completely passive, requiring no power source or electronics to control the movement. Solar cells that track the angle of the sun can be 38 percent more efficient at generating power than those that are mounted in a fixed position, explained George Whitfield, a DMSE graduate student.

Heliotrope prototype demonstrating 15° change in orientation with 25°C temperature gradient.

“We wanted to show this concept in action,” Whitfield explained as he demonstrated a scale model of the arch by shining a spotlight to warm up one side and cause the arch to bend, tilting the solar panel toward the light. “Our prototypes are cheaper than existing systems” for tracking the sun, he said, and could be built from materials that are readily available in developing nations.

The second-place team worked on a way to make inexpensive coatings for windows that would block infrared

light, thus allowing daylight through while blocking the sun's heat to reduce the need for air conditioning. Third place went for simple wind generators that could be placed alongside a road to produce electricity from the movement of passing cars.

And the fourth prize went to a simple attachment for a bicycle that could allow it to generate electricity to charge batteries, such as those used in the One Laptop Per Child computers.

C O U R S E I I I B A R B E C U E After a long absence, the Course III fall barbecue has returned. On Registration Day, students, staff, and faculty gathered outside Building 6 for hamburgers, potato chips, liquid nitrogen ice cream, and fun. An anonymous donor provided T-shirts for students in attendance: The multilingual messages reflect the diversity of our student enrollment and were a brainteaser for those dredging up vocabulary long forgotten in a high-school French or Spanish class.

Ryan Bonaparte, ’09, of Air Energy Resource (AER), with their prototype wind-powered electricity generator.

AER won all three of the contest checkpoints, during which the teams The department plans another used equipment in the DMSE Rapid MADMEC competition startFabrication Lab to develop compoing next spring. nents of the final prototype.

SUMS publicity chairs Phyllis Xu, ’09, and Michele Lee, ’10, showing off new Course III gear.

G.J. La O’, Ph.D. ’08, and Ethan Crumlin, MechE, of InfraConsto, 2nd-place winners for their innovative work on IR window coatings.

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Noah Vawter, Media Arts and Sciences, member of Green Take-Off, demonstrating the team’s entry.

M R S R E C E P T I O N The DMSE Alumni Club co-sponsored the department reception at this year’s Materials Research Society Meeting in Boston. Many thanks to all the alumni, faculty, grad students, and friends who came. Particular thanks to Dave Danielson, President of the DMSE Alumni Club; to Doug Moorehead of A123; to Jifeng Liu, Xiaochen Sun, and Dave Bradwell for presenting their research posters; to Megan Brewster and George Whitfield for representing the grad students; and to Rob Walat of Wolf Greenfield for financial support!

The Glass Lab:Then O N E

O F M I T ’ S S E C R E T S

B E S T - K E P T

—Pamela B. Vandiver and J. Kim Vandiver Who knew that in the basement of Building 4, on the Infinite Corridor, there is a DMSE lab where students learn the art of glassblowing? Headed by faculty advisor Prof.

Michael Cima and lab director Peter Houk, the Glass Lab teaches 40 students each semester, at the beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels.

The Lab began in the 1970s when Pam Vandiver, S.M. ’83, Ph.D. ’85, and now a faculty member at the University of Arizona, began teaching ceramics at Massachusetts College of Art and became involved in the establishment of a permanent glass program at MIT. During IAP of 1972, Pam temporarily moved the Mass Art furnace over to Prof.

John Elliott’s metal processing lab, and Pam and her husband Kim built an annealing oven controlled with stovetop dials. Kim and Pam both felt that it would be wonderful if glass processing could be offered at MIT. Professors John Elliott, Tom King and Walter Owen encouraged the effort.

During that spring, Bob Mehrabian and Pam, along with Profs.

Cyril S. Smith, Heather Lechtman, and Arthur Steinberg of the Integrated Studies Program persuaded the DMSE Undergraduate Curriculum Committee to give a subject on casting metal and blowing glass.

Professor Mert Flemings agreed to let Ed Bachman, the Unknown students in Glass Lab, ca. 1974 casting master, participate.

“Materials Processing: An Historical and Engineering Approach” was offered once. Bob Mehrabian, Heather Lechtman, Arthur Steinberg, Pam Vandiver, Ed Bachman, and Cyril Smith taught this interdisciplinary science and humanities subject that combined hands-on labs with lectures that provided contextual, historical, and fundamental understanding of materials.

Marian Mitchell and Kim Vandiver, ca. 1973 After the Vandivers offered another very successful IAP subject, John Elliott agreed to let the furnaces stay. The Freshman Seminar Program and Bonnie Kellerman took over support of the Glass Lab. Cyril Smith and Don Uhlmann helped the Glass Lab by giving occasional guest lectures in freshman seminars. Between 1972 and 1975, during IAP, the Glass Lab presented exhibits about the technological history of glass. Student imitations and replicas of significant ancient glass objects were exhibited. Pam borrowed four display cases from the MIT Museum and moved them into the lobby of Building 10. This advertising effort helped to stimulate student interest and recruit DMSE undergraduates.

The Glass Lab continued to develop and grow and became an MIT family project. It contributed in numerous ways around campus and continued to grow as a program. The Lab students visited the Boston Museum of Fine Arts a few weeks into each class. They discussed and argued about how the glass pieces they viewed were made and worked, and then tried to duplicate them in the lab. For instance, coffee grounds were identified as the ideal poreproducing additive to clay when replicating 1500 BCE Egyptian core vessel technology. The students also read historical texts, such as those by Theophilus, the 11th-century monk, who described the making of glass finger rings and glass windows for cathedrals. Students made, wore, and presented the rings to one another.

Professor F.H. Norton gave his 19th-century glass collection to the Museum of Fine Arts, where Glass Lab students studied it in the museum conservation lab. Many of the pieces were from the Sandwich Glass Company on the

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to learn more about activities taking place within the Glass Lab, please visit http://web.mit.edu/glasslab

inar on glass processing was always about breaking annealed sheet and tempered glass with various tools, such as modern diamond tools and medieval quartz rocks, HFetching it to strengthen it, breaking etched strips, and pulling pristine high-strength rods. Students Yet-Ming Chiang, ’80, Sc.D. ’85, and Dunbar Burnie, ’81, Ph.D. ’86, remember that lab and the Prince Rupert Drop lab (still performed yearly for Prof. Chiang’s class).

Cape and others were made in Lechmere Square at the Boston and Sandwich Glass factory. MIT students made and wore replicas of hats, canes, and boutonnieres that the glassworkers wore in Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day parades.

For special projects dealing with ancient glass technology and art, the Glass Lab received funding from Roy Lamson and the MIT Council for the Arts. A few times Margaret MacVicar, Course VIII ’64, Course III Sc.D. ’67, turned to the Glass Lab to engage students at risk of dropping out.

The students became a part of the Glass Processing Lab where they practiced handling hot glass for a few hours a week. Because of this, Dean MacVicar found the funds to help the lab afford odds and ends through the UROP budget, such as new pipes or new sets of shears.

The Glass Lab continued to develop in diverse ways. Professor Smith suggested that Pam study Egyptian faience.

After researching, writing, and publishing Ancient Egyptian Faience, Pam brought faience to the Glass Lab’s explorations. Enamels were soon added to the curriculum, with the prize being a style known as plique à jour, glassinfilled wire designs that resemble mini-stained glass windows. Most attempts produced a pile of glass-coated wire.

Pam took Course III subjects, such as 3.081, the lab subject taught by Prof. Bob Ogilvie, and incorporated XRF, SEM-EDS, microprobe, and other analytical techniques into the lab.

The Glass Lab had a memorable influence on the development of its students. The first lab in the freshman sem08

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Eventually, Prof. Elliott needed his lab space back so Don Uhlmann arranged for the Glass Lab to use the Ceramics Processing lab “temporarily.” Pam enrolled as a DMSE graduate student, but the Glass Lab got even busier. So many students enrolled that the lab became overcrowded with lab sections twice a day.

Professor Dave Kingery decided to co-teach a glass and ceramic processing lab as an upperdivision elective lab in DMSE. Half the projects concerned modern ceramics and half ancient ceramics and glass. This subject was offered for three years, with David Clark sharing teaching responsibilities for one semester. Several of the experiments with ancient processes were incorporated into Dave Kingery’s and Pam Vandiver’s Ceramic Masterpieces.

Pam Vandiver eventually completed her studies in Materials Science Engineering and left MIT in the summer of 1985 to become Research Physical Scientist at the Smithsonian Institution. The Glass Lab shut down until Michael Cima decided to act as sponsor and found glass artist Page Hazlegrove to take it over, leading to a new era of growth.

At the University of Arizona, Pam is now trying to establish a Glass Lab that has MIT’s same sense of adventure and learning by doing.

The Glass Lab: Now Sponsored by DMSE and incorporating instruction in materials science principles, Glass Lab courses are open to all MIT students. The beginning class is the most oversubscribed subject at MIT. Each semester, between 90 and 110 students attend a lottery for 16 available spots. Unfortunately, many students enter the lottery throughout their undergraduate career and are never picked for a slot.

From their first class, students get a hands-on experience, learning about the fundamentals of glass-working and the unique physical characteristics of the material. Experienced instructors teach the classes, giving demonstrations that are followed by student practice sessions.

As students acquire the skills necessary to make the things they design, they are encouraged to experiment and explore the endless possibilities of the material.

The program emphasizes the shared boundary of art and science: Openended play leads to understanding of the material and encourages intuitive thinking.

Effective teamwork is essential to blowing glass. From the very beginning, Glass Lab students learn both how to assist, and how to manage an assistant.

The Page Hazlegrove Lectureship in Glass Art honors Page, who brilliantly directed the Glass Lab from 1988 until her untimely death in 1997.

It was Page’s dream to invite young and upcoming artists to MIT to use Glass Lab and Institute resources to deepen their artistic visions. Page believed that an annual artist-in-residence would also be a valuable experience for students in the Glass Lab. Since 1997 a number of outstanding artists working in glass have been invited to MIT to lecture, do research, conduct workshops, and use the Glass Lab to further explore their own work. Renowned artist Dale Chihuly was this year’s Light fixture from Simmons Hall (named for Richard Simmons, ’53). Fixtures were Hazlegrove Lecturer.

designed at MIT and made in the Glass Lab.

Kaitlyn Becker, MechE ’08 and member of the MIT Wind Ensemble, with some of her glass musical instruments.

In an effort to more adequately meet demand for the glassblowing class, the Glass Lab has started planning for an expansion and renovation project. This effort has been recognized by the Institute as a priority for the recently launched Campaign for Students.

The Annual MIT Great Glass Pumpkin Patch provides the primary source of funding for the Glass Lab. Students and instructors work together all year to create over one thousand glass pumpkins that are sold on Kresge Oval in the fall during an event that is open to the public and highlighted in The Boston Globe.

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Visitors to the Glass Pumpkin Patch show off their harvest.

Helen Lee, Architecture ’00, designed and constructed this piece for display at MIT.

Awards and Honors F A C U L T Y H O N O R S Professor Samuel Allen, S.M. ’71, Ph.D. ‘75, was named the 2008 recipient of the Capers and Marion McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising. This award is given by the School of Engineering to a faculty member who has demonstrated a lasting commitment to the personal and professional development of the student body.

Professor Yet-Ming Chiang, ‘80, Sc.D. ‘85, gave the freshman keynote address this fall. President Susan Hockfield said she invited Chiang to deliver the keynote address because he personifies several MIT ideals: a passion for pursuing the outer limits of knowledge, a commitment to tackling the most pressing challenges of the day, and an entrepreneurial spirit.

Professor Tom Eagar, ‘72, Sc.D. ‘75, received the Fred Plummer medal and presented the Plummer Memorial Lecture at the American Welding Society on October 7th.

The Plummer award recognizes outstanding contributions to national education and training in welding.

Professor Darrell Irvine, Ph.D. ‘00, was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. This five-year appointment provides researchers with the resources and flexibility to pursue new ideas. “My whole lab is devoted to figuring out how to deliver drugs and vaccines that better target the immune system," says Irvine. "We're trying to learn how to make the immune system mount more effective attacks against cancer, HIV, and other diseases.”

The goal is to create materials that, once in the body, can attract and be taken up by immune cells, and then spur them to seek out pathogens or tumor cells.

Professor Christine Ortiz is one of six distinguished university faculty scientists and engineers forming the 2009 class of National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellows (NSSEFF). The fellows conduct basic research in core science and engineering disciplines that underpin future DoD technology development. This basic research is crucial to enabling future applications in sensors, functional materials, surveillance, near shore navigation, communications and information security, energy independence, and force protection.

Professor Chris Schuh has been invited to participate in the National Academy of Engineering 2008 Frontiers of

Engineering symposium. The event brings together engineers ages 30 to 45 who are performing exceptional engineering research and technical work in a variety of disciplines.

Professor Yang Shao-Horn (MechE, joint appointment with DMSE) received the Charles W. Tobias Young Investigator Award of the Electrochemical Society; this award recognizes outstanding scientific and/or engineering work in fundamental or applied electrochemistry or solid-state science and technology by a young scientist or engineer.

She also received the Tajima Prize of the International Society of Electrochemistry for her outstanding achievements in the field of electrochemical energy conversion and storage, especially for developing novel nanostructured materials for fuel cells and batteries.

Popular Science’s annual “Brilliant 10″ list, recognizing the top young scientists to watch, includes Prof. Francesco Stellacci, whom they call “The Materialist“. He is noted for developing ”a material that can suck twenty times its weight in oil out of a sample of water. The material can be used to clean up massive crude-oil spills, and some have called the work a blueprint for scientists designing nanomaterials to help protect the environment.”

On a recent trip to Greece, Prof. Ned Thomas was recognized with an honorary doctorate from the University of Ioannina. He also gave a talk to the MIT Club of Greece.

Ned and Dee Thomas after the ceremony at which he received his honorary degree.

With Martin Maldovan, S.M. ’01, Ph.D. ’04, Prof. Thomas has recently authored Periodic Materials and Interference Lithography for Photonics, Phononics and Mechanics, published by Wiley-VCH. On the energy front, Prof. Harry Tuller’s group recently obtained a Chesonis Foundation fellowship as part of the MIT Solar Revolution Project (SRP) designed to explore

Wulff Lecture Two of the Department’s graduate alums were generous enough to agree to give the Wulff Lectures this year. In the spring, Prof. Krystyn J. Van Vliet, Ph.D. ’04, lectured on “Scratching Below the Surface: Material Metastability Enables Engineering Solutions.” She spoke broadly about the scope of materials science and how her academic interests have evolved into her current work on chemomechanical coupling in a range of material systems including supersaturated metal alloys, nanoscale amorphous oxides, synthetic polymer thin films, and living mammalian cells and microbes.

This fall, Prof. Yoel Fink, Ph.D. ’00, gave a lecture entitled “From Fiber Optic Surgical Scalpels to Fabrics that See: new materials and systems that could dramatically accelerate the availability of solar energy. A second fellowship from the MIT Energy Initiative is supporting Di Chen on fuel cell related research.

S T U D E N T A W A R D S Richard Lin, ’09, has won a Marshall Scholarship, allowing him to study for up to two years at a British university.

He is a double major in materials science and engineering and biology, with double minors in history and applied international studies. His great passion, however, is traveling to developing countries, gaining an understanding of people's needs, and engineering devices to make their lives better. While studying abroad at Oxford University, Lin allied himself with Oxfam International to engineer a new device that would provide a low-cost solution to the problem of cholera outbreaks in rural regions of developing countries. Oxfam had been manually chlorinating wells thrice daily, an inefficient use of manpower. Lin saw the problems inherent in this system, so he led a team to create an inexpensive apparatus that would chlorinate the wells without the need for attending personnel. The device proved so successful that, in addition to Oxfam adopting it, numerous other non-profit organizations have sought to buy it.

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In the past year, George Whitfield was awarded the DMSE Community Service Award for distinguished service to the department and/or the materials community outside of MIT. Mr. Whitfield was reelected as president of the Graduate Materials Council, and he was awarded a

How Materials Scientists are Shaping the Future.” Professor Fink’s doctoral research on the perfect mirror led to multi-material, multi-functional fibers and fiber assemblies that have found wide use in surgical devices.

The Wulff Lecture is an introductory, general-audience, entertaining lecture which serves to educate, inspire, and encourage MIT undergraduates to take up study in the field of materials science and engineering. The entire MIT community is invited to attend. The Wulff Lecture honors the late Professor John Wulff, a skilled, provocative, and entertaining teacher who inaugurated a new approach to teaching the popular freshman subject: 3.091 Introduction to Solid State Chemistry.

Lemelson Foundation Presidential Graduate Fellowship and a renewal of his Intel Foundation PhD Fellowship award.

A poster by grad students Nonglak Meethong, Yu-Hua Kao, and Ming Tang, working with Profs. Yet-Ming Chiang and Craig Carter, won the “Most Excellent Paper Award” at the International Meeting on Lithium Batteries, held June 2008 in Tianjin, China. On Materials Day, the same group of students won the Best Poster Presentation Award for “Nanoscale Olivine Compounds as HighPower Li-ion Battery Positive Electrodes for Transportation Applications.”

There were two recipients of the John Wulff Award for Excellence in Teaching: Yoda Patta for 3.022 Microstructural Evolution in Materials and Ozge Halatci Akbulut for 3.014 Materials Lab. Lin Jia received the Exceptional First-Year Performance Award. Lin is working on photonic crystals and optical lattices for his Ph.D. thesis.

Sung Keun Lim received the award for Best Paper Award by a Second- or First-Year Student.

A L U M N I H O N O R S Megan E. Frary, Ph.D. ‘05, received the ASM Bradley Stoughton Award for Young Teachers. Professor Frary is now an Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Boise State University. In 2007, she received the NSF Faculty Early Career Development award.

!

MIT and DMSE thank our generous alumni/ae for their support of Course III during the fiscal year ending in June 2008. Gifts can be made by visiting http://giving.mit.edu.

Donors Benjamin C. Allen SM 1954, ScD 1957 Samuel M. Allen SM 1971, PhD 1975 Steven Allen SM 1951, ScD 1959 Ronald E. Allred ScD 1983 Tryggve G. Angel 1951 Raymundo Arroyave SM 2000, PhD 2004 Chester L. Balestra 1966, ScD 1971 Mark G. Benz SM 1959, ScD 1961 Ilan A. Blech ScD 1964 Donald J. Blickwede ScD 1948 John B. Blum SM 1977, PhD 1979 H. Kent Bowen PhD 1971 William E. Brower, Jr. PhD 1969 Caryl B. Brown SM 1995 Paul E. Brown 1956, SM 1957, ScD 1961 Robert L. Brown SM 1961, ScD 1964 Mayank T. Bulsara SM 1995, PhD 1998

John C. Campbell SM 1957 Andrew Chen SM 1991, PhD 1995 David R. Chipman 1949, ScD 1955 John S. Choe 1998 Manoj K. Choudhary ScD 1980 Stephen Chwastiak PhD 1963 William S. Coblenz SM 1977, PhD 1981 Aliki K. Collins PhD 1987 Joel A. Conwicke PhD 1969 Elisabetta Cortesi 1987, SM 1998 Jeanne L. Courter PhD 1981 David C. Cranmer PhD 1981 John M. Currie 1950 Mark M. D’Andrea, Jr. 1958, SM 1962 Daniel B. Dawson SM 1967, ScD 1973 Mark R. De Guire PhD 1987 Robert de Monts SM 1979 Nancy F. Dean PhD 1992 Chrysanthe Demetry PhD 1993 Raoul A. Desilets SM 1943

G I L B E R T C H I N ( 1 9 5 9 ) F E L L O W S H I P F U N D The Gilbert Chin (1959) fellowship fund was established in 1991 with gifts from Dr. Chin’s friends and family. In honor of what would have been Dr. Chin’s 75th birthday and 50th reunion year, his family have begun working with MIT and DMSE to celebrate his legacy by adding to the endowment which will ensure that the fellowship remains competitive and useful in the coming years.

Born in China, Dr. Chin came to the US at age 15. He received the SB (1959) and ScD (1963) degrees in Metallurgy. He joined Bell Laboratories as a member of the technical staff and went on to head the Physical Metallurgy and Ceramics research and development department. His principal area of research was in magnetic and mechanical behavior of metals and alloys. In 1970, Dr. Chin and his team developed Chromindur, a type of magnetic alloy used to convert electrical signals into speech in telephone handsets. The Chromindur family of alloys can be formed into permanent magnets at room temperature.

The development replaced hot stamp magnets used in telephone handsets, thus improving their performance.

Dr. Chin later became director of the Passive Components research laboratory, which under his direction, developed optical fibers for light-wave communications and made

Joseph M. Dhosi SM 1959 Chun Christine Dong PhD 1990 Alfred L. Donlevy SM 1963 Joseph M. Driear ScD 1980 James L. Drummond SM 1970 David C. Dunand PhD 1991 Joseph M. Dynys PhD 1982 Lawrence E. Eaton SM 1960 George Economos SM 1951, ScD 1954 William B. Eisen PhD 1968 Sami M. El-Soudani SM 1972 John W. Elmer ScD 1988 Jim Eng 1935 Alan T. English SM 1960, PhD 1963 Robert S. Feigelson SM 1961 Marc A. Finot ScD 1996 Paul M. Fleishman SM 1982 Robert A. Frank 1983, SM 1985, ScD 1989 Gerald S. Frankel ScD 1985 Robert J. Furlong, Jr. SM 1977 Jeffrey P. Gambino PhD 1984 Mary L. Gambone SM 1984 Amitava Gangulee ScD 1967

Frank W. Gayle ScD 1985 Ralph G. Gilliland PhD 1968 Emilio Giraldez Paredes PhD 1986 Daniel S. Gnanamuthu MTE 1972 Nev A. Gokcen ScD 1951 Robert S. Goodof 1973, SM 1973 Frank E. Goodwin SM 1976, ScD 1979 Dodd H. Grande SM 1983, PhD 1987 Martin L. Green PhD 1978 Manohar S. Grewal ScD 1972 Vernon Griffiths ScD 1955 Mehmet N. Gungor SM 1982, ScD 1986 Honglin Guo PhD 1998 Elaine D. Haberer 1997, SM 1998 Rodney E. Hanneman SM 1961, PhD 1964 Steven S. Hansen 1971, SM 1975, ScD 1978 Robert A. Hard SM 1949, ScD 1957 Adam S. Helfant 1985

advances in superconductivity.

He died in 1991 at age 56.

Currently, accrued interest in the fellowship fund supports promising graduate students for part of an academic year.

Past recipients of Chin Fellowships are Adrian Kohan, PhD ’97; Krystyn Van Vliet, PhD ’04; G. Michelle Poliskie, PhD Dr. Chin, in his 1959 ’05; Jeffrey Payne, SM ’06; yearbook photo.

Bruce Wu, PhD ’07; Joseph Walish, PhD ’08; and current doctoral-track students Daosheng Deng, Jennifer Chia-Jen Hsieh, Charles Moore, and Heechul Park.

Dr. Kohan has had a successful career as a consultant with McKinsey in Buenos Aires, Prof. Van Vliet joined the DMSE faculty in 2003, Dr. Poliskie has worked in academia and consulting, Mr. Payne is an officer on active duty with the U.S. Navy, Dr. Wu is working in the field of intellectual property law, particularly patent prosecution, while completing a Juris Doctor degree in D.C., and Dr. Walish is pursuing a post-doc with Ned Thomas’ group.

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Michael V. Herasimchuk 1939 Lloyd H. Hihara SM 1985, PhD 1989 Gregory J. Hildeman ScD 1978 David C. Hill 1959, SM 1969, PhD 1970 Allon I. Hochbaum 2003 Christian C. Honeker PhD 1997 William F. Hosford, Jr. ScD 1959 Charles R. Houska SM 1954, ScD 1957 Simone Peterson Hruda SM 1987, PhD 1992 Peter Yaw-Ming Hsieh SM 1999 Can B. Hu PhD 1980 Gordon Hunter 1981, SM 1981, PhD 1984 Donald Jaffe 1952, SM 1953 Bor Z. Jang SM 1979, PhD 1982 Mark H. Jhon 2001 Eva Jiran PhD 1990 Lucie Beth Johannes MEng 2003 Bertrand G. Journet SM 1983, PhD 1986 Debra L. Kaiser ScD 1985 Junichi Kaneko SM 1965, ScD 1967 Rakesh R. Kapoor SM 1987, ScD 1989 Theodoulos Z. Kattamis SM 1963, ScD 1965 Robert Nathan Katz 1961, PhD 1969 Tatsuro Kawabara SM 1969 Thomas E. Kazior PhD 1982 Stuart P. Keeler 1957, ScD 1961 George A. Keig ScD 1966 Jack Keverian 1950, SM 1951, ScD 1954 Heinz Killias PhD 1964 Lionel C. Kimerling 1965, PhD 1969 Christopher G. King 1982 Peter F. King ScD 1957 Gerald A. Knorovsky ScD 1977 Iwao Kohatsu PhD 1971 David Kramer 1955 Charles R. Kurkjian ScD 1955 Ronald Kuse SM 1996 Raymond K.F. Lam ScD 1988 Felix Lau SM 2001 D. William Lee ScD 1958 Hyuck Mo Lee PhD 1989 Jennifer A. Lewis ScD 1991 Ching-Te Lin SM 1996, PhD 1998 Minfa Lin ScD 1990 Pinyen Lin PhD 1990 Ulf H. Lindborg ScD 1965 Herbert W. Lloyd SM 1952 Matthew Ian Lozow 1999 John P. Lynch, Jr. 1952 Mark T. Lynch SM 1982

Bruce A. MacDonald SM 1961, PhD 1964 Robert D. Macdonald SM 1940 Thomas O. Mason PhD 1977 Lawrence J. Masur SM 1982, PhD 1988 Satoru Matsuo PhD 1993 Anne M. Mayes 1986 Mary L. McCarthy SM 1981 Paul C. McIntyre ScD 1993 Eugene S. Meieran SM 1961, ScD 1963 Gerald S. Meiling SM 1959, ScD 1966 Jonas D. Mendelsohn PhD 2002 Hiroshi Menjo SM 1985 Stephen A. Metz 1967, PhD 1970 Arthur B. Michael ScD 1952 Gary A. Miller 1960, SM 1961, ScD 1965 Thomas P. Moffat ScD 1989 Edmund H. Moore SM 1987 John E. Morral PhD 1969 William G. Morris SM 1963, ScD 1965 Uchu Mukai SM 1992, ScD 1995 Samuel K. Nash SM 1948, ScD 1951 George E. Nereo SM 1963, ScD 1966 Trinh Tran Nguyen PhD 2006 Barbara M. Nichols 1994 Carlos A. Nocetti MTE 1974, SM 1974 Walter Nummela ScD 1963 Henry J. Nusbaum PhD 1977 William R. Opie ScD 1949 J.I. Orbegozo SM 1965 Robert D. Palazzolo SM 1998 Satyavolu S. Papa Rao PhD 1996 Regis M.N. Pelloux SM 1956, ScD 1958 William T. Petuskey ScD 1977 Alan W. Postlethwaite SM 1949 William R. Prindle ScD 1955 Svante Prochazka SM 1968 John W. Putman SM 1950, ScD 1953 Livia M. Racz 1989, PhD 1993 Richard A. Rawe SM 1958 Ranjan Ray ScD 1969 Christine M. Reif 1986 Aldo M. Reti 1965, SM 1967, ScD 1970 Richard E. Riman PhD 1987 Martin D. Robbins SM 1956 McDonald Robinson ScD 1967 Irwin B. Roll SM 1952, ScD 1958 Robert M. Rose 1958, ScD 1961 Alan R. Rosenfield 1953, SM 1955, ScD 1959

G R A D U A T E F E L L O W S H I P F U N D R A I S I N G DMSE’s public commitment to supporting all first-year graduate students through endowed fellowships aims to provide financial security while these students adjust to the demands of a graduate education and explore MIT’s wide range of research opportunities. In addition to the general department fellowship fund, many individuals (and one group) are honored with a named fellowship endowed through the generosity of family and friends.

Gilbert Y. Chin fellowship R.L. Coble fellowship Morris Cohen (1929) fellowship Nicholas J. Grant fellowship John F. Elliott fellowship Ronald A. Kurtz fellowship Carl M. Loeb fellowship Anne M. Mayes (1986) fellowship David V. Ragone fellowship Robert M. Rose Presidential fellowship, given by Craig, ’61, SM ’62, ScD ’64, and Rose Tedmon Vasilios and Danae Salapatas fellowships H.F. Taylor fellowship H.H. Uhlig graduate fellowship Stuart Z. Uram fellowship Wenckus fellowship Class of ’39 fellowship Thomas A. Rowe 1966, SM 1967 Edward L. Rubin 1983, SM 1984 Robert C. Ruhl PhD 1967 Anil K. Sachdev ScD 1977 Norihisa Saito SM 1985 Vasilios S. Salapatas PhD 1966 Srikanth B. Samavedam PhD 1998 K.K. Sankaran PhD 1978 Susan L. Schiefelbein PhD 1996 George K. Schwenke SM 1996 Michele W. Sequeira 1989, SM 1991 Maurice E. Shank ScD 1949 Andrew M. Sherman 1967, PhD 1972 Bruce M. Shields SM 1952 Scott A. Sikorski SM 1989, PhD 1994 Shri N. Singh SM 1966, ScD 1969 Charles H. Smith PhD 1982 Edward S. Sproles, Jr. ScD 1976 Charles Stein SM 1954, MTE 1960, ScD 1962 Edward T. Stephenson, Jr. SM 1956 William B. Stockton PhD 1995 Peter R. Stone 2005 Yusuf Sumartha SM 1997 Adelaide T. Sundin 1947 Alan W. Swanson PhD 1972 Peter Tarassoff ScD 1962

Edmund Y. Ting 1980, ScD 1984 Ellen S. Tormey PhD 1982 Min-Hsiung Tsai ME 1972 Helen E.A. Tudor MAE 1983 John C. Turn, Jr. PhD 1979 Johannes M. Uys ScD 1959 Deborah L. Vezie PhD 1993 Robert H. Walat 1993 John H. Walsh ScD 1955 Christine A. Wang 1977, SM 1978, ScD 1984 Michael J. Wargo ScD 1982 Stanley I. Warshaw ScD 1961 Janine J. Weins PhD 1970 Martin Weinstein SM 1959, ScD 1961 Stanley Weiss SM 1955, ScD 1965 David O. Welch SM 1962 Eric Werwa PhD 1997 Bruce W. Wessels PhD 1973 Michael D. Westphal 1991 Thomas R. White 1969 George G. Wicks PhD 1975 Jeryl K. Wright ScD 1973 Yuhong Wu PhD 2003 Thomas A. Yager PhD 1980 Man F. Yan ScD 1976 John C. Yarwood PhD 1969 Tri-Rung Yew SM 1987, PhD 1990 Tseh-Hwan Yong PhD 2005 Dongsik Yoo PhD 1997 Euijoon Yoon PhD 1990 Bizhong Zhu PhD 1997 Emmanuel N. Zulueta SM 1980

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At “Innovation in Materials,” this fall’s workshop on entrepreneurship and materials science, Prof. Gene Fitzgerald, ’85, quoted one of MIT’s Technology Licensing Office staff who asked why so many patent disclosures and applications are coming out of Building 13 and its immediate neighborhood. Professor Fitzgerald assured her that the drinking fountains are fine, but he told the event’s audience that the breadth of a materials science education allows innovators to “rise up and see a long way.” He explained that true innovation doesn’t necessarily involve designing a new technology, but may be best summarized as matching an existing solution to the problem at hand.

Organized by graduate student Megan Brewster as part of MIT’s program for Global Entrepreneurship Week, the event featured Dr. Desh Deshpande, Prof. Fitzgerald, Prof.

Angela Belcher, and Dr. David Danielson, Ph.D. ’08, who shared their varied experiences of working with start-ups and investors.

Dr. Deshpande, head of the DMSE Visiting Committee and founder of Sycamore Networks, Inc., asserted that “Now is a great time to be thinking about being an entrepreneur. Hard times benefit the doers.” He emphasized that teamwork is important, as different team members contribute a variety of skills; picking the right team is important, however, because “you can’t have two cooks in the kitchen who don’t get along.” Now active as a board member for several companies, he said, “I started as a technical guy, coming up with the ideas and so on. Now I’m doing a lot of different things—I’m more of a cheerleader, more of a coach.”

A question from the audience prompted Dr. Danielson to observe that “talent attracts talent, strength attracts strength, and that first impression of strength can be a nucleation site, leading to further growth.” Professor Thomas predicted that engineers in general and MIT in particular will continue to lead as “people come here with their hard problems. We’re in contact with the world.”

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