Troy, N.Y. – Materials interface expert Pawel Keblinski has been named head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the School of Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Keblinski, a professor of materials science and engineering, was recently named a fellow of the American Physical Society for “significant contributions to fundamental understanding of interfacial heat flow using computational materials science tools.”

“Dr. Keblinski is a leading researcher within his field and a distinguished academic, and we are pleased to welcome him in his new role as head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering,” said Shekhar Garde, dean of the School of Engineering. “We wish him the greatest success as he guides the continuous development of the department’s educational and research excellence, promotes the achievements of faculty, staff, and students, and grows our ties with MSE alumni and other communities.”

With a focus in one of the most rapidly evolving academic disciplines, Rensselaer’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering is home to about 150 undergraduate students and 60 graduate students. Research within the field meets an ever-increasing demand for solid materials from the designers of jet engines and rocket boosters, microelectronic devices, optical components, medical prostheses, and many other products. The principles that govern the processing and structure of materials to produce optimum properties and performance are embodied in the materials engineering curriculum.

Keblinski’s work is focused on the relationship between microstructure and various materials properties, such as mechanical response, diffusion, and most prominently thermal transport, in nano-structured and interfacial materials. A major goal of Keblinski’s work is to design and analyze computational models in order to gain insights into the nature of the material behavior and properties. These insights are then used to formulate theoretical concepts, to understand experimental results, and to guide future experiments. Other interests include connecting atomic-level modeling with the macroscopic description of the material based on constitutive models.

Prior to joining the School of Engineering at Rensselaer in 1999, Keblinski was a postdoctoral researcher at Argonne National Laboratory and worked at Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe in Germany as a recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship. Keblinski, a native of Poland, received his M.S. degree from Warsaw University and his doctoral degree from Pennsylvania State University.

Keblinski is an author or co-author of 175 papers on topics ranging from mesoscopic-level modeling of vapor deposition and phase separation to atomic-level structure-property relationship in bulk and interfacial materials. He received a Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) from the National Science Foundation in 2002, and three School of Engineering Research Awards.