Government Agency Presentation: National Science Foundation Division of Materials Research

2012 MRS Spring Meeting logo

Funding Opportunities for Materials Research at the National Science Foundation

Ian Robertson - National Science Foundation

Ian Robertson - National Science Foundation

Thursday, April 12
6:00 pm – 6:45 pm
Marriott Marquis, Yerba Buena Level, Salons 1, 2 

Ian Robertson (view biography)
Director
Division of Materials Research
National Science Foundation
 


Materials research activities extend across many divisions and directorates at the National Science Foundation. A brief overview of the materials activities, with special attention given to those activities within the Division of Materials Research, will be presented. The presentation will address funding opportunities including CAREER awards for young faculty; Cyber-infrastructure for the 21st century; the Intersection of the Biological and Mathematical and Physical Sciences; Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability; Instrumentation, as well as NSF activities related to the Materials Genome Initiative. Upcoming activities in biomaterials, metals and ceramics, and in instrumentation will be described and discussed.  

Ian Robertson Biography

Ian Robertson currently serves as the Director of the Division of Materials Research, National Science Foundation. He is a Donald B. Willett Professor of Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He joined the Metallurgy and Mining Engineering Department at the University of Illinois in 1982 as a post-doctoral fellow and was appointed as an assistant professor in 1984, associate professor in 1989, professor in 1995, and served as Head of the Department from 2005-2009. He received a B.Sc. degree (first class) in Applied Physics from Strathclyde University, Glasgow, Scotland, in 1978, and his D.Phil from the University of Oxford in 1982. Professor Robertson is a member of TMS, MRS, and APS, and a Fellow of ASM International. His research focuses on the use of the electron microscope as an experimental laboratory in which dynamic experiments can be conducted to reveal the atomistic processes responsible for the macroscopic response of a material. He has applied this technique to enhance our understanding of the reaction pathways and kinetics that occur during deformation, phase transformation, irradiation, and hydrogen embrittlement of metallic materials. His insight to the mechanisms responsible for hydrogen embrittlement of metals was recognized by the Department of Energy in 1984 when he, along with Howard Birnbaum, received the DOE prize for the Outstanding Scientific Accomplishment in Metallurgy and Ceramics. He has been a principal editor for the Journal of Materials Research since 1995, and a key reader for Metallurgical Transactions since 1994, and has recently become a member of the editorial board of Microscopy Today and Editor-in-Chief of the review journal, Current Opinion in Solid State and Materials Science.
 

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