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ROBERTO OF OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LAB RECEIVES NATIONAL MATERIALS ADVANCEMENT AWARD

Dr. James B. Roberto, Associate Director for Physical Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, receives the National Materials Advancement Award from the Federation of Materials Societies at a reception at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on December 8, 2004. 

                The Award recognizes individuals who have demonstrated their outstanding capabilities in advancing the effective and economic use of materials and the multi-disciplinary field of materials science and engineering generally, and who contribute to the application of the materials profession to national problems and policy.

                At Oak Ridge, Dr. Roberto has led one of the largest non-defense materials science and engineering research programs in the Unites States.  In this role, he has actively promoted materials science in all of the disciplines:  condensed matter physics, materials chemistry, and materials physics.  This program has made major breakthroughs that have had both scientific and commercial success, and Dr. Roberto’s  impact on the facilities and science involved in the characterization of materials has been profound.  He has been responsible for the upgrade of the High Flux Isotope Reactor, one of the major facilities for neutron scattering research in the world.   Dr. Roberto currently is one of the national leaders in establishment of the Department of Energy Nanoscale Science Research Centers that will be located at five of the national laboratories. 

He has served on a number of Department of Energy,  National Science Foundation, and National Academy studies including the organizing committee for the National Research Council’s “Workshop on Condensed Matter and Materials Physics,” co-chair of the National Academy of Sciences Forum on “Driving Innovation through Materials Research,” and the organizing committee for the National Academy’s Solid State Sciences Committee Forum on “Materials in a New Era.”  He has also served on a number of editorial boards, including as chair of the Advisory Review Board for the Journal of Materials Research.

Working effectively with the materials community and with Congress and federal agencies on national policy, Dr. Roberto has served as President of the Materials Research Society and as Chair of the Division of Materials Science of the American Physical Society, and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

Dr. Roberto’s S.B. is in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1968), and he received the M.S. (1970) and PhD. (1974) in Applied Physics from Cornell University.

Previous recipients of the National Materials Advancement Award include Dr. Paul C. Maxwell, Science Consultant to the US House of Representatives Committeee on Science (1985);  Dr. John B. Wachtman, Jr., Director of the Center for Ceramics Research at Rutgers University (1986);  Dr. William O. Baker, retired Chairman of the Board of AT&T Bell Laboratories (1987);  Dr. Morris Cohen, Institute Professor Emeritus, MIT (1988);  Dr. Allen G. Gray, Technical Director Emeritus, ASM International (1989);  Dr. Klaus M. Zwilsky, Director of the National Materials Advisory Board (1990);  Dr. Rustum Roy, Director of the Materials Education Council (1991);  Rep. George E. Brown, Jr., Chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee (1992);  Dr. Lyle H. Schwartz, Director of the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (1993);   Dr. Nathan E. Promisel, retired Director of the National Materials Advisory Board (1994);  Dr. Peter R. Bridenbaugh, Executive Vice President-Automotive, ALCOA (1995);  Dr. Mary L. Good, Under Secretary of Commerce (1996);  Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr. (1997);  Dr. Robert Baboian, retired Fellow of Texas Instruments (1998); Dr. Merton C. Flemings, Toyota Professor, MIT (1999);  Dr. Mildred S. Dresselhaus, Director, Office of Science, US Department of Energy (2000);  Dr. Bhakta B. Rath, Associate Director of the Naval Research Laboratory (2001); Dr. Jerry M. Woodall, D. Baldwin Sawyer Professor at Yale University (2002); and Dr. John Hopps, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense (2003).

The Federation of Materials Societies is a consortium of technical and professional societies and associations whose constituencies include scientists, engineers and other professionals active in the areas of materials policy as well as R&D, processing, manufacturing, recovery, and resource availability.