Ph.D., Stanford (1979): Nanoindentation, small-scale mechanical behavior, mechanisms of deformation and fracture in solids

Brief Bio:

• George M. Pharr received his BS in Mechanical Engineering at Rice University in 1975 and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford in 1979. After one year of postdoctoral study at the Engineering Department of the University of Cambridge, England, he returned to Rice in 1980 as a faculty member in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science. During a sabbatical leave in 1987-88, he worked with the Ceramic Sciences Group at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY. He moved to his current joint position at UT/ORNL in 1998 and has been head of the UT Materials Science and Engineering Department since 2006. He received ASM International’s Bradley Stoughton Award for Young Teachers of Metallurgy in 1985 and was elected a Fellow of ASM International in 1995. His honors also include the Amoco Award for Superior Teaching at Rice University in 1995 and the University of Tennessee Chancellor's Award for Research and Creative Achievement in 2004. He has been an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society since 1990 and served as Volume Organizer for the MRS Bulletin in 2000. He has chaired or co-chaired many large professional society meetings including the 1995 Spring Meeting of the Materials Research Society in San Francisco and the 2000 Gordon Research Conference on Thin Film Mechanical Behavior, which he co-founded in 1998. He is an author or co-author of more than 180 scientific publications, including 4 book chapters, and a Thomson ISI "Highly Cited Researcher in Materials Science". His research focuses on nanoindentation and small-scale mechanical behavior of materials.

Research Areas:

• Nanoindentation and nanomechanical testing
• Thin film and small-scale mechanical behavior
• Mechanisms of fracture and flow in solids
• Finite element modeling of indentation contact

Selected Awards & Honors:

• 1977-1979, Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Fellow
• 1984, ASM Bradley Stoughton Award for Young Teachers of Metallurgy
• 1995, Amoco Teaching Award, Rice University
• 2003, ISI "Highly Cited Researcher" in Materials Science
• 2004, UT Chancellor's Award for Research and Creative Achievement
• 2008-present, Chancellor's Professor, University of Tennessee

Professional Activities:

• Guest Editor, Journal of Materials Research - Special focus issue on "Indentation Methods in Advanced Materials Research," (2009)
• Associate Editor, Journal of the American Ceramic Society, 1990-present
• Volume Editor, MRS Bulletin (2000)
• Guest Editor, Journal of Materials Research - special focus issue on "Instrumented Indentation Testing," (January 2004)
• Guest Editor, Philosophical Magazine - special issue on "Instrumented Indentation Testing in Materials Research and Development," (December 2006)
• Chair, 2000 Gordon Research Conference on Thin Film Mechanical Behavior, Plymouth, NH (July 2000).
• Meeting Co-Chair, Spring Meeting of the Materials Research Society (April 1995)
• Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering, The University of Memphis (2002-2005)
• Master - Wiess College, Rice University (1989-1994)

Selected Publications: