Faisal Alamgir has been promoted to full professor. Alamgir joined MSE in 2007. His dissertation work was on the use of electron microscopy and various spectroscopies to study bulk metallic glasses in order to explain their high glass-forming ability from the bottom up. The work also involved the development of electron microscopy based techniques for probing sub-nanoscale structure. His dissertation and follow-up work has led to multiple publications

Wenshan Cai has been promoted to full professor. Wenshan has a join appointment in ECE and MSE. Prior to joining Georgia Tech in January 2012, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials at Stanford University. His scientific research is in the area of nanophotonic materials and devices, in which he has made a major impact on the evolving field of plasmonics and metamaterials.

Josh Kacher has been awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor. Kacher joined MSE in fall of 2015. Prior to his appointment, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. There, he worked in collaboration with General Motors to understand the Portevin-le Chatelier effect in Al-Mg and with the navy to develop novel rhenium-replacement alloys. His research approach centered on applying in situ TEM deformation to understand the influence of local chemistry on the behavior of defects such as dislocations and twins. This was coupled with mesoscale characterization of the defect state using EBSD for multiscale characterization of the deformation processes.

Matt McDowell has been awarded tenure and promoted to associate professor. McDowell joined Georgia Tech in the fall of 2015 as an assistant professor with a joint appointment ME and MSE. His research group focuses on understanding how materials for energy and electronic devices change and transform during operation, and how these transformations impact properties. The group uses in situ experimental techniques to probe materials transformations under realistic conditions. The fundamental scientific advances made by the group guide the engineering of materials for breakthrough new devices.