Department of Applied Physics and Materials Science - Materials Science

News & Events

Highlights

Professor Greer Featured As a Woman in Materials Science and Engineering

06-26-13

Julia R. Greer, Professor of Materials Science and Mechanics, has been featured in the Member Journal of the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (JOM) special package on women in materials science and engineering. In the piece she states "my most rewarding moments are when I can see that, with my mentoring and my help, I was able to facilitate the transformation of a student into a scientist." [JOM Article]

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Professor Greer Awarded the Nano Letters Young Investigator Lectureship

06-17-13

Julia R. Greer, Professor of Materials Science and Mechanics, has been chosen as the 2013 awardee for the Nano Letters Young Investigator Lectureship. This award honors the contributions of a young investigator who has made major impacts on the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology. [ACS Release]

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Senior Spotlight

05-31-13

Electrical Engineering Senior Raymond Jimenez was first introduced to Caltech as a high school student when he worked in the laboratory of Paul Bellan. As a Caltech undergraduate his favorite class was APh/EE 9, Solid-State Electronics for Integrated Circuits—a course then taught by Oskar Painter. He also worked on a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) project with Axel Scherer, who describes Jimenez as "one of the most capable undergraduates whom I have had the pleasure of working with over my past 20 years at Caltech," adding that he has "extraordinary" abilities. "Raymond brought tremendous enthusiasm, talent, and insight to our neural probe project," Scherer says. "It was fun working with him on our research projects, and I think of him more as a scientific collaborator than as a student." Raymond and his peers will be honored at Caltech's 119th Commencement on June 14 at 10 a.m. [Caltech Spotlight]

Tags: APhMS EE research highlights Oskar Painter Paul Bellan Axel Scherer Raymond Jimenez

International Scholarship Focused on Engineering Global Challenges Announced

03-14-13

The Caltech Division of Engineering and Applied Science and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering have established a new scholarship program, named after outgoing National Academy of Engineering (NAE) president Charles M. Vest at their institutions, along with six other universities around the country. "The Vest Scholarship is a superb opportunity for high-powered international graduate students to work with faculty and researchers who are international leaders in their engineering disciplines," says Chair Ares Rosakis. "At Caltech, due to its small size and strong interdisciplinary philosophy, the students will have the opportunity to work closely with not only these international leaders in engineering research, but also with their collaborators in all areas of science and technology." [Caltech Release] [Application Information]

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Disease Diagnosis at the Touch of a Button

02-25-13

Axel Scherer, Bernard Neches Professor of Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics and Physics, and colleagues have built a new version of a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) device, which generates many copies of a pathogenic nucleic acid, allowing the infection to be detected. The device is the result of nearly 10 years of research at Caltech. In 2004, Scherer, a leader in the field of microfluidics, and George Maltezos were investigating how to manipulate biological fluids on a chip. While this was an interesting engineering problem, Maltezos began to wonder how he could apply the microfluidic techniques that he was perfecting to real-world problems. Then the H5N1 bird flu pandemic erupted in Asia, and the team had their real-world problem. [Caltech Release]

Tags: APhMS EE MedE health Axel Scherer George Maltezos

Professor Greer Receives NASA Research Grant and Early Career Awards

11-01-12

Julia R. Greer, Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Mechanics, is among a select group of 10 recipients of NASA's inaugural Space Technology Research Opportunities Early Career Faculty grants. She has also received the 2013 Early Career Faculty Fellow award from the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) and the Young Investigator's Medal from the Society of Engineering Science (SES). Congratulations Professor Greer! [Caltech Release]

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Number One Engineering and Technology University

10-04-12

For the third year the Times Higher Education world university rankings has ranked Caltech as number one in engineering and technology. [View Rankings] [Caltech Feature]

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Professor Greer Receives Breakthrough Award from Popular Mechanics magazine

10-01-12

Julia R. Greer, Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Mechanics, is receiving a 2012 Breakthrough Award from Popular Mechanics magazine as part of the team that engineered the world's lightest solid material. "I am delighted that Professor Greer is being honored with this award," says Ares Rosakis, chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science (EAS) at Caltech. "She is a great example of how we in EAS are working at the edges of fundamental science to invent the technologies of the future." [Caltech Release]

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Material's Spacing is Key to Brittle-to-ductile Transition

07-16-12

Julia R. Greer, her postdoctoral scholar Dr.Dongchan Jang, and colleagues have used experiments and atomistic simulations of nano-twinned metals (which have the unique combined effect of being strong and ductile) to decipher the specific role of the twin boundaries. They have found that it is the spacing between the twin boundaries that determines whether a material is brittle or ductile as opposed to the sample size, as would be expected. Greer states "this is probably the first study that truly isolated the twin boundaries by making samples which contained only twin boundaries, periodically spaced throughout the sample, and then tested them in tension. This understanding will help in the design of better structural materials and provide a certain amount of predictability in doing so, which has not been possible to date." [Nature Nanotechnology Article and Movies]

Tags: APhMS research highlights Julia Greer Dongchan Jang postdocs