Professor Rustum Roy is one of the world’s most distinguished and honored materials scientists. He holds 5 professorships: three at The Pennsylvania State University, one at Arizona State University, and one at the University of Arizona. He is a 30-year member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, (the first from India) with the rare distinction of also have been elected to the National Academies of Science/Engineering in Russia, Japan, Sweden, and India.

In 2003 Penn State’s Materials Research Laboratory, which he founded in 1962 and directed for a quarter century, was ranked #1 in the world by the Institute for Scientific Information on the basis of the number of highly cited scientists in the laboratory.

He has left a permanent mark on the materials field, starting with its most fundamental base—phase diagrams and crystal chemistry. His discovery and championing of major discoveries in really new materials processing—the sol-gel process (utilized (not only cited)—in over 50,000 papers); hydrothermal reactions; microwave processing; and most recently, the structure of water and the effects of polarized EM and acoustic radiation on all condensed matter, have left a permanent mark on materials science and engineering.

He has been extremely productive of innovative materials research for sixty years with major funding from various agencies—including the Defense Department and others—and leading industries; most recently in CVD diamonds and water.

He is Chair of the 501(c)(3) "Friends of Health" and of its Science Advisory Committee which examines and puts into the public domain the whole range of disruptive innovations in human healing based on materials science and physics instead of biochemistry. 

 —Feb. 1, 2009