Donaldson lecturers

2004–05 series

Professor Eduard Arzt

Max Planck Institute for Metals Research and Institute of Physical Metallurgy,
University of Stuttgart

Born in 1956 in Linz, Austria, Eduard Arzt studied physics and mathematics at the Universität Wien, Austria. He completed his Ph.D. there in 1980 with a project carried out at the Universität Leoben. Following a two-year period as a research associate at Cambridge University, UK, he joined the Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung as a group leader in 1982. After a one-year stay as visiting professor at Stanford University, in 1990 he was appointed professor of physical metallurgy/metal physics at the Universität Stuttgart and jointly director at the Max-Planck-Institut für Metallforschung.

He has received several awards, including the Masing-Gedächtnispreis, the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis, the Max-Planck-Forschungspreis, the Acta Metallurgica Outstanding Paper Award, and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz-Preis. He has been visiting professor and R.S. Williams Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a corresponding member of the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften and is presently a member of the Council of the Materials Research Society (United States) and of an external advisory group to the EU Research Directorate in Brussels. His research interests range from advanced structural to thin-film materials and, more recently, to the mechanics of biological structures.

Eric Beckman

Bayer Professor and Chair, Department of Chemical Engineering
University of Pittsburgh

Eric Beckman received his B.S. degree in chemical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980. After graduation he joined Monsanto Plastics and Resins, where he worked on nylon resin product and process development. Late in 1981 he moved to Union Carbide Corporation, where he performed technical service work for its urethane intermediates group. In 1988 he received a Ph.D. in polymer science from the University of Massachusetts (on the thermodynamics of CO2-polymer mixtures). After postdoctoral research at Battelle’s Pacific Northwest Laboratory on emulsion polymerization in supercritical fluids (1987–88), Beckman assumed his faculty position at the University of Pittsburgh (1989). He was promoted to associate professor in 1994 and to full professor in 1997.

He received a Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation in 1992 and the Presidential Green Chemistry Award in 2002. In 2000, Beckman was appointed the first Bayer Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh and in 2002 became chairman of the chemical engineering department. He currently is also co-director of the Mascaro Sustainability Initiative within the School of Engineering at Pitt. Beckman’s group currently conducts research into green chemical processes as well as the design of polymers for use in medical applications.

Dr. Julia Phillips

Director
Physical, Chemical and Nano Sciences Center
Sandia National Laboratories

Julia M. Phillips is director of the Physical, Chemical, and Nano Sciences Center at Sandia National Laboratories, a position she assumed in 2001. In February 2005 she also became director of the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT), a DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences nanoscience research center at Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories.

She came to Sandia in 1995 after 14 years at AT&T Bell Laboratories. She has a Ph.D. in applied physics from Yale University and a B.S. in physics from the College of William and Mary. Her research has been in the areas of epitaxial metallic and insulating films on semiconductors, high-temperature superconducting, ferroelectric, and magnetic oxide thin films, and novel transparent conducing materials. Phillips was president of the Materials Research Society in 1995 and holds or has held elected positions in the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2004 and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has served on the editorial boards of Applied Physics Letters, Journal of Applied Physics, Applied Physics Reviews, and Journal of Materials Research and has published over 100 papers in these and other journals. She has also been involved in National Research Council activities including the National Materials Advisory Board which included three years as chair.

Vijay Vaitheeswaran

Global environment and energy correspondent
The Economist

Vijay Vaitheeswaran was born in Madras, India, and grew up in Cheshire, Connecticut. He graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in mechanical engineering.

He joined The Economist in 1992 as its London-based Latin America correspondent. In 1994 he opened the publication's first bureau in that region (in Mexico City), writing about political, financial, and cultural developments in that part of the world. He remained there as bureau chief until 1997 when he returned to London. In 1998 he became the publication's energy and global environment correspondent, covering developments in politics, economics, business, and technology related to those topics. He is now based in New York.

Vaitheeswaran is an adjunct faculty member at New York University and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. His commentaries are featured regularly on National Public Radio's "Marketplace," and he is a frequent guest on the BBC, CNN, PBS and other television networks. He is the author of a new book on the future of energy, Power to the People: How the Coming Energy Revolution Will Transform an Industry, Change Our Lives, and Maybe Even Save the Planet. Harvard Professor John Holdren, reviewing the book in Scientific American, called it “by far the most helpful, entertaining, up-to-date, and accessible treatment of the energy-economy-environment problematique available.”

The seminar is sponsored by the Department of Mechanical Engineering, the Department of Chemistry, and the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science.