Materials Research Activities at Penn State

In 1959, Rustum Roy championed and with the support of Prof. E. F. Osborn (his former thesis-advisor), Vice-President for research started the very first interdisciplinary graduate degree program in "solid state technology" (today called materials).  This was a radical innovation in ANY university sitting anywhere, where a graduate degree was awarded under the auspices of a graduate faculty drawn from half a dozen or more departments.

The degree program was a runaway success.  Eight years after started up (when Prof. Roy stepped down as Chair), it was graduating over 20 Ph.D.'s per year.  It continues till today (under the name Materials).

It has probably produced more graduate degrees than any interdisciplinary degree program in the country.

In 1962, Prof. Roy helped create and was appointed Directory of the first Interdisciplinary Materials Research Laboratory in the country (& world), dependent only on University initiative.

The Penn State Laboratory was unique in several ways.  In common with many, it brought together faculty from several departments into contiguous space.  But approximately half of these moved their entire research operations into the MRL space, and their tenure base was transferred to the MRL.  Other faculty retained tenure bases and part of their research space in departments.  Teaching was done via departmental connection.

Roy also developed a cache of semi-permanent but not tenured Research Faculty, who were admitted to this Graduate Faculty and supervised theses.  They had no regular teaching responsibilities.  Penn State's MRL was also unique in the U.S. (and world) in consciously focusing its major research thrust on ceramic (or high band gap materials, and materials synthesis and preparation).  

The MRL helped make Materials the signature scientific field of Penn State.  Four out of fifteen tenured faculty were elected to the U.S. National Academy. The influence of Penn State's Materials Research Lab in shaping both the national and international organization of materials research and specific fields of science within it are summarized in the four figures below.

Materials Research At Penn State Today

In 2002, Penn State has about 200 tenure track faculty connected in one way or other.  Under an organizational umbrella which sub serves the Materials Research Laboratory Building.  MRI's website

The MRL still houses the major coherent interdisciplinary research thrusts in ferric Materials of all kinds:  The Dielectric Center;  the innovative materials synthesis and processing including diamonds and ultra-hard materials; the Cement and Low Temperature materials effort, etc, etc. including all of Prof. Roy's materials research activities.