Long-Qing Chen, distinguished professor of materials science and engineering, engineering science and mechanics, and mathematics, has been named the Hamer endowed professor of materials science and engineering. An endowed professorship is among the highest honors that can be bestowed on a faculty member. The endowed professorship was established with a $1 million gift from Donald W. Hamer, and his wife, Marie Bednar.
Chen has earned world-wide recognition and acclaim for his leadership in computational materials science. He is attributed with pioneering the development of phase-field models to explain grain growth, domain evolution, interactions between defect and phase microstructures, and strain-dominated microstructure evolution in cutting-edge elastically inhomogeneous systems.
"It is a tremendous honor to be appointed the first Hamer professor,” said Chen. “Not only will this have a positive impact on my research, but it will also help increase the visibility of Penn State’s top-ranked materials sciences program."
"This professorship will help Long-Qing continue his research as one of the world’s top materials scientists in this very important field," said Gary Messing, distinguished professor of ceramics and head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. "I am pleased he has been named to this prestigious professorship and am grateful to the Hamers for generously supporting excellence and innovation in research."
Chen has published more than 400 papers in the area of computational microstructure evolution and multiscale modeling of metallic alloys, oxides and thin films, and energy materials. He has received numerous awards for his accomplishments, including fellow of the Materials Research Society, American Physical Society and American Society for Metals, the Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research; Special Research Creativity Award from the National Science Foundation; Faculty Scholar Medal for Outstanding Achievement (Engineering) from Penn State; Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; Materials Science Research Silver Medal from the American Society for Metals; Distinguished Scientist/Engineer Award from the Electronic, Magnetic and Photonic Materials Division of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society and the Materials Theory Award of the Materials Research Society.
Chen earned a bachelor’s degree in materials science and engineering from Zhejiang University, China, a master’s degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and a doctoral degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Hamer is a 1968 Penn State alumnus and is the chairman and founder of State of the Art Inc., a leading supplier of film resistive components to the biomedical, communications, aerospace and defense industries located in State College, Pennsylvania.