The Materials Research Society Honors L. Eric Cross with Von Hippel Award

The Materials Research Society has chosen L. Eric Cross of Penn State University as the recipient of the 2010 Von Hippel Award, the society’s highest honor.  The Von Hippel Award is “conferred annually to an individual in recognition of the recipient’s outstanding contribution to interdisciplinary research on materials.”

A founding member of the Penn State Materials Research Laboratory, one of the world’s leading materials labs, Cross continues to make important contributions to the field of ferroelectric materials. As his award citation notes, Cross is recognized “For his imposing leadership in the science and applications of ferroelectric materials.”  His current work on flexoelectric composites could make possible a new generation of lead-free transducers for use in multiple industries worldwide. 

Cross is a fellow of the Materials Research Society, the American Physical Society, the Optical Society, the American Ceramics Society and IEEE.  In 1983, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Cross was named an Evan Pugh Professor of Electrical Engineering at Penn State in 1985.  The Evan Pugh Professor is the highest distinction that the university can bestow on a faculty member.  He has authored or coauthored more than 850 refereed papers and 12 patents. Along with his late colleague Robert Newnham, Cross developed the piezoelectric transducer designs that are used in almost all modern medical ultrasound machines.

Educated at Leeds University, in the United Kingdom, Cross’s undergraduate education was interrupted by World War II, during which he worked for the British Admiralty on a program using high frequency direction finding (HF/DF) to track German U-boats, which ultimately allowed convoys to cross the Atlantic unharmed.  Much of his later work in the field of sonar undersea transducers was supported by the U.S. Navy.       

Cross will receive the Von Hippel Award at the MRS Fall Meeting on Dec. 1, in Boston, where he will deliver the award lecture based on his research on “Flexoelectric Composites – The Cutting Edge for New Lead-Free Piezoceramics.”