Rustum Roy has three titles at Penn State: Evan Pugh Professor of the Solid State; Professor of Geochemistry; and Professor of Science, Technology and Society. Like the Smith Barney advertisements, he has earned them. Besides his steady "million dollar" research program, he always teaches (sometimes two or three) undergraduate/graduate classes. His striking lectures on science policy and science, religion, and philosophy are in demand campus- and world-wide—from Tokyo business executives to radical church groups in Washington. One of the nation’s earliest champion of interdisciplinarity, he was the founding Director of Penn State’s Interdisciplinary Materials Research Laboratory (MRL)—the nation’s pioneer in interdisciplinary education and whose research was ranked #1 in the world by I.S.I in 2003. He also started and directed Penn State’s STS program—which also became the national leader of that field. He was the Founding Editor-in-Chief of five international journals.

For the sports-avid U.S. public, the best known Penn State faculty member is, of course, Joe Paterno. But in the world of science and engineering, both here and, especially abroad, Penn State’s most honored faculty member now (and probably ever) is Professor Rustum Roy.

By all the measures of outside honors and recognition bestowed, Rustum Roy is our #1 academic. Penn State research has never been recognized by a Nobel Prize. A more general level of recognition is membership in National Academies. Roy was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (some 1 in 2,000 make this rank) before he was 50—the first ever of Indian origin. And of those members one or two percent are elected to National Academies in other countries. Rustum Roy has been elected to four such: Japan, Switzerland, Russia and India. Of course, as have most prominent scientists, he has also won innumerable national and international awards including Japan’s "equivalent" of a knighthood. But among these, what sets him apart from all his U.S. colleagues in science and engineering research is the fact that he is recognized in several other fields. In science policy, he spends his sabbaticals in policy think tanks writing widely on policy; and serving four Pennsylvania Governors as a Science Advisor. In religion he is a personal friend of leading religious leaders and institutions. He was selected to give one of the world’s most prestigious lecture series in religion and philosophy—the Hibbert lectures, in England. Most recently, he has also focused in the area of health—the healing of “whole persons”—body-mind-spirit, via vectors from any of those.

—Feb. 1, 2009