Faculty News

Dr. Narendra Dahotre, Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, is elected to the 2009 Fellow of the Indian Institute of Metals (IIM). He has been recognized for excellence and outstanding contributions to basic understanding and engineering of laser-materials interactions along with implementation of high power lasers for materials processing and surface engineering.

Such fellowships are awarded by the IIM to a foreign member when his/her accomplishments and services in the field of metallurgical and materials engineering are internationally prominent and also significantly beneficial to the Indian community. He is internationally known for his work on fundamentals and applications of laser surface engineering of metals, ceramics, polymers and composites.

His work over 25 years on laser materials-interactions has been compiled in four books, 15 U.S. Patents, 12 proceedings and over 190 papers. Earlier, he has received 2006 R&D 100 Award, 2006 UT Chancellor’s Research and Creativity Achievement Award, 2006 UT College of Engineering Research Fellow Award and has been elected to 2004 Class of ASM Fellows and 2008 Class of ASME Fellows.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded UNT Profs. Mohammad Omary, Jincheng Du, and Thomas Cundari a major grant to study novel metalloaromatic materials for potential use in molecular electronics. In this multi-investigator project, UNT professors will work with Prof. Bruce Gnade of the University of Texas at Dallas to synthesize new multinuclear Au, Ag, and Cu complexes, study their optoelectronic properties, and explore their efficacy in metal-organic field effect transistor (MOFET) devices. The grant is a three-year project with a total support of $1.3 M, awarded following submission to the prestigious Collaborative Research in Chemistry (CRC) program at NSF. This award came on the heels of seed funding of an NHARP award from the State of Texas to this team. The four investigators will collaborate on the synthesis, structural characterization, material screening, molecular and solid-state modeling, and device testing of the title complexes.  The film forming properties and solid state device behavior of these compounds will be examined, and information gained from these studies will be fed back to develop new design parameters for the materials.  It is suggested that the superior electrostatic properties of the materials and their stability towards light, heat and moisture are encouraging factors for fabrication of stable thin films and efficient devices.  The cyclotrimer complexes and coordination polymers also have the potential to perform better than purely organic field effect transistor (OFET) materials based on reliable theoretical predictions of fundamental properties that have been verified conceptually by experimental techniques.  Any or all of these improvements to the state-of-the-art would significantly impact the molecular electronics field given the fact that transistors are the most critical components of all electronic devices.  The investigators will also work with two UNT research clusters of excellence in nano-photonics (BNPC) and advanced computing (MMRC) to enhance cross-disciplinary training for graduates and undergrads from both the Chemistry and MSE departments as well as to involve local K-12 institutions in the research, following prior successes by the PIs in these aspects.

Witold Brostow was elected member of the Ukrainian Academy of Petroleum and Natural Gas in June.  Dr. Brostow is already a member of the European Academy of Sciences and of the Mexican National Academy of Sciences.

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Narendra Dahotre as the new Chair of the Department of Material Science and Engineering.

Dr. Dahotre is currently a Professor with joint appointment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. He is also a senior faculty member of the Center for Laser Applications at the University of Tennessee Space Institute-Tullahoma and was Chairman (2002) and Vice Chairman (2003) of the center. Dr. Dahotre is the author of two technical books and editor/co-editor of 14 books. He is the author of over 144 reviewed technical journal articles. He holds 15 US patents in the area of laser materials processing. He has organized 15 symposia and conferences in the area of Surface Engineering and High Temperature Coatings and contributed to 40 technical presentations and chaired over 25 technical sessions at national and international conferences.  Dr. Dahotre is an ASM International Fellow(2002), ASME Fellow(2007), and IIM Fellow(2009).

Dr. Dahotre will join UNT on January 1, 2010.

Dr. Zhiqiang Wang will join MTSE as an assistant professor in our department this Fall.  Dr. Wang received his PhD from UCLA and is currently a postdoctoral research associate at Los Alamos National Laboratory.  His research interests include computational nano/micro mechanics and mesoscaling modeling of materials specifically dislocation dynamics.  Dr. Wang will join the MTSE computational group (Drs. Du, Needleman, and Srivilliputhur) and the Center for Advanced Scientific Computing and Modeling (CASCaM).

The First MTSE NSF CAREER Award!  Our own Srinivasan G. Srivilliputhur (Srini) was just awarded the very prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Grant for his proposal “Fundamental Insights into Deformation of Lightweight Alloys from Discovery-Class Atomistic Simulations”.  He will receive $430,000 over 5 years to study these lightweight alloys for potential transportation applications.   Srini received this grant on his first attempt- an even more impressive accomplishment.