Robert Hull

Hull joined RPI in January 2008 to assume the positions of the Head of the Materials Science and Engineering Department and the Henry Burlage Professor of Engineering. Prior to that he spent about a decade at Bell Laboratories in the Physics Research Division, and twelve years at the University of Virginia, where he was the Director of an NSF MRSEC Center and Director of the UVA Institute for Nanoscale and Quantum Science. He received his PhD in Materials Science from Oxford University in 1983. Hull is highly active in engineering and materials science societies and professional groups. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and of the Materials Research Society, and in 1997 served as president of the Materials Research Society. He has also chaired a Gordon Research Conference on Thin Films, and chaired the Committee of Visitors for the National Science Foundation’s Division of Materials Research. Within the realms of materials and nanoscience, Hull’s research focuses on the relationships between structure and property in electronic materials, fundamental mechanisms of thin film growth, and the self-assembly of nanoscale structures. Other areas of interest include degradation modes in electronic and optoelectronic devices, the properties of dislocations in semiconductors, nanoscale fabrication techniques, nanoscale tomographic reconstruction techniques, development of new nanoelectronic architectures, and the theory and application of electron and ion beams.