An international collaboration led by Penn State researchers has developed a new tool to reduce the time and resources involved in determining which materials can be best applied in wearable technology, including biomedical devices.
Content Administrator
Melissa Hockstad, M.S.
1998g
President and CEO of the American Cleaning Institute
MHockstad@CleaningInstitute.org
Melissa Hockstad is president and CEO of the American Cleaning Institute (ACI), the leading association representing the $60 billion U.S. cleaning product supply chain. In this role, she is responsible for the overall leadership of ACI including advocacy, science and research, communications, sustainability, and business growth.
Prior to joining ACI she served as vice president, petrochemicals at the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM). In this capacity, she was responsible for managing AFPM’s petrochemical activities including leadership of various petrochemical committees, organization of the International Petrochemical Conference, and providing support for addressing legislative, regulatory and communications issues impacting the petrochemicals membership.
She previously held positions at: the Plastics Industry Association where she was the vice president of science, technology, and regulatory affairs; the Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates (SOCMA) where she served as performance improvement director; and at Basell Polyolefins (now LyondellBasell) where she was a senior engineer.
She currently serves on the Board of the National Association of Manufacturers – Council of Manufacturing Associations and on the External Advisory Board of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State.
Melissa received a master of science in materials science and engineering from Penn State and a bachelor of science in engineering science from the University of Virginia.
Melissa Hockstad named MatSE Alumna of the Year
Amit Das, Ph.D., MBA
1985g, 1988g
Director of New Product Development, State of the Art, Inc.
Amit Das is currently the director of new product development at State of the Art, Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania. The company manufactures high reliability chip resistors for mission critical applications and has been in business for over fifty years. He has been in this role for nineteen years and has helped the company develop several new products, and processes.
He has used the characterization tools available at Penn State's Materials Characterization Lab to improve properties of existing chip resistors, as well for the development of new resistors with unique properties.
Das has played an important role in research and development at several other organizations, such as Rogers Corporation, Chandler, Arizona, where he was the engineering manager developing better dielectrics for high frequency circuit boards. Research fellow at Mead Specialty Products, Chillicothe, Ohio, improving paper composites for automotive break liners, and laminate flooring. President of ATA Coatings & Devices, Columbus, Ohio, a company that he started to enable the outsourcing of research and development in various types of coatings, from tribological to anti-reflection. Research scientist at Philip Morris Research, Richmond, Virginia, developing electronic inhalation products and sensors.
Das has a master of science and a doctoral degree in solid state science from Penn State and a MBA from Virginia Commonwealth University. He was an adjunct faculty member at Averett University, Virginia, teaching quantitative business analysis. He has over twenty U.S. patents and has presented at several conferences.
Being on the board of Penn State's Graduate School Alumni Association and the chairman of the Global Outreach Committee, Das travelled around the world to connect with Penn State Alumni. Also, he started a seminar series at Penn State inviting faculty members and industrial leaders to talk about their experiences that would be pertinent to graduating students.
Das delivered the 2019 Distinguished Tressler Lecture in Materials at Penn State. In 2022, he joined the Executive Advisor Board of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University.
He currently resides in State College. His hobbies include and ballroom dancing and traveling.
2020 McFarland Award
“The Critical Role of Materials in Global Decarbonization"
William Woodford, Ph.D.
Co-Founder and CTO, Form Energy
Abstract
Global climate change is transforming the planet and the impacts are increasingly felt. Stopping these impacts requires collective action to develop, scale, and deploy an array of new technologies to dramatically reduce net carbon emissions. This requires a fundamental transformation of the global economy. Materials-enabled innovations in photovoltaics, batteries, power electronics, and others are taking off and enabling rapid decarbonization of electricity generation and transportation sectors. However, these innovations are not enough — when fully scaled, these improvements will represent only about half of the needed change. Deep decarbonization presents a massive need (and opportunity!) to fundamentally reinvent materials processing, from mining and refining to final processing, across a wide range of low- and high-tech applications. This will require long-term and committed effort to revisit the fundamentals of our field and to rapidly translate and scale the resulting technologies. As specific examples, the processes used for steelmaking, aluminum smelting, and concrete production all must be fundamentally reinvented, starting from basic research and development. This talk will highlight some of the key challenges, early successes and white spaces for new opportunities around impact-driven technology development geared at the reinvention of our global materials value chain.
Bio
William Woodford is co-founder and CTO of Form Energy, a startup company developing long-duration grid-scale energy storage systems. Prior to Form Energy, Dr. Woodford was Director of Advanced R&D at 24M Technologies, where his team focused on low-cost automotive and grid storage Li-ion development, as well as high-energy density Li-metal based cell technologies. In 2018, he was recognized with Technology Review's TR35 award, as one of the top 35 innovators under the age of 35. Dr. Woodford earned his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his BS from the Pennsylvania State University, both in Materials Science and Engineering.
Students, faculty and researchers in the department are fortunate to have access to a variety of endowed lectures and on-campus visits from materials scientists at the top of their fields. Many of these special events also serve to honor Materials Science and Engineering alumni who served the department, University and entire materials community with great honor.
A challenge in materials design is that in both natural and manmade materials, volume sometimes decreases, or increases, with increasing temperature. While there are mechanical explanations for this phenomenon for some specific materials, a general understanding of why this sometimes happens remains lacking.
John Mauro, professor of materials science and engineering at Penn State, has been named a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). He was selected for “developing and applying data-driven models and machine learning that enable high-strength, damage-resistant glasses," according to the NAE.
The 14th annual Materials Visualization Competition (MVC14) is now accepting submissions. The deadline for submissions is March 7.
Submissions now open for annual Materials Visualization Competition
The 14th annual Materials Visualization Competition (MVC14) is now accepting submissions. The deadline for submissions is March 7.
The event is an annual scientific and artistic visual competition sponsored by the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Materials Research Institute at Penn State.
MVC14 celebrates the quality of research in materials at Penn State, while increasing awareness of materials science through the creativity and visualization of our researchers.
Entry is open to all Penn State undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, faculty, and staff working on materials-related topics.
Judges will select winners in four categories: scientific, visual, computation/modeling, and best of show. Prizes totaling $1,700 will be awarded between the best in show, and the first, second and third place winners in each category.
The public will choose the People’s Choice Award winner from all entries, which will be available online to view and vote on electronically from March 13 through March 20. The image that receives the most votes will receive a $100 prize.
Submissions are due by 11:59 p.m. on Monday, March 7. Full details regarding image submission, participation guidelines and awards can be found at /mvc.