Dr. Pamir Alpay Elected Fellow of the American Physical Society
By Giorgina Paiella
MSE Professor and Department Head Dr. S. Pamir Alpay was recently elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) for his work on functional/smart materials.
Representing over 50,000 members, APS is a non-profit membership organization that works to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics by way of education, outreach, research journals, advocacy, and international presence. Election to Fellowship in the APS is selective and prestigious; it is limited to no more than one half of one percent of total membership. Fellows are nominated by their professional peers for outstanding contributions to physics, and the APS Council evaluates and elects successful candidates as Fellows.
Dr. Alpay received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Maryland in 1999. He joined the UConn MSE Program in 2001 as an Assistant Professor. Dr. Alpay received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2001 and the UConn School of Engineering Outstanding Junior Faculty Award in 2004. He was also named the United Technologies Corporation (UTC) Associate Professor in Engineering Innovation, a position that he held from 2008 to 2010.
Dr. Alpay was nominated for the Fellowship through the APS Forum on Industrial and Applied Physics. He has worked extensively with industry in guiding the development of new materials and devices; examples include his work related to focal plane arrays for night vision, gas leak imaging, and fire detection applications (General Motors and United Technologies Corp. – UTC), dielectrically tunable phase shifters devices (Delphi, SMI Inc. and Army Research Labs), solid-state heating/cooling (UTC), and a new generation of electrical contacts (GE Energy – Industrial Solutions). Dr. Alpay and his collaborators have developed quantitative models that act as the guiding set of principles for experimentalists in determining the role of domain phenomena in piezoelectric sensors/actuators, misfit and thermal strains on the properties of pyroelectric detectors, defect structures (dislocations and space charges) in ferroic materials, and electrostatic and electromechanical interactions in multilayered ferroelectric heterostructures.
Dr. Alpay is the author of 130 publications in peer-reviewed journals and is currently an editor of the Journal of Materials Science. Most recently, he was the recipient of the Materials Science and Engineering Department’s Award for Teaching Excellence as well as the School of Engineering Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award.
Published: December 16, 2013
Categories: awards, faculty, news
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