Jan Schroers named Robert Higgin Professor at SEAS

Jan Schroers, an internationally recognized leader in the rapidly developing field of bulk metallic glasses, was recently appointed the Robert Higgin Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, effective immediately.

He is a faculty member at the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science (SEAS).

Schroers joined the Yale faculty in the Department of Mechanical Engineering in 2006, following a postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology and working as director of research at Liquidmetal Technologies. At Yale, his research has focused on the study of bulk metallic glasses, a relatively new class of materials made from complex, multicomponent alloys that have the moldable pliability of plastics, but the strength of metals. Some of his many contributions to the field include the discovery and explanation of ductility in metallic glasses, the development of bulk glasses based on gold, and the introduction of high temperature metallic glasses.

For his work, Schroers received the 2017 Lee Hsun Award from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has also led the organization of numerous international symposia and served as scientific advisor to commercial companies, including Liquidmetal Technologies, Desktop Metals, and Supercool Metals.

More broadly, his research focuses on understanding the relationships between processing, chemical composition, microscopic structure, and physical properties of technologically useful materials. He is an expert in a broad range of materials science phenomena, including glass formation, single crystal formation, mechanical properties of amorphous and crystalline materials, nanoscale effects and nanofabrication, and fundamental studies of the kinetics of nucleation and growth.

His work advances the capabilities of state-of-the-art methods of materials synthesis and characterization. He is a world leader in the field of combinatorial synthesis of metals paired with fast screening and structural characterization. Schroers was a pioneer in the use of modern large data and machine learning techniques for the discovery of high-performance materials. Recently, he has developed novel materials processing techniques for additive manufacturing, nanomolding, and thermoplastic net-shaping. His breakthrough work is enabling nanoscale molding of metallic glasses and crystalline metallic alloys with numerous applications in other fields of science and engineering such as catalysis, electronics, and quantum devices.

Schroers is also a committed university citizen. At Yale, he has served as the director of graduate studies for his department for over a decade. He has mentored and advised numerous graduate and postdoctoral students, many of whom have gone on to faculty careers themselves, including at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the University of Texas at Dallas, and Williams College.

He is a graduate of the University of Cologne and earned his Ph.D. from RWTH Aachen in Germany.