Bradley Chmelka
Institute Role
Member of Production & Storage Solutions Group
Research
Bradley Chmelka’s research in nanotechnology explores new materials for
energy conversion (e.g., batteries, fuel cells). His research is motivated by
the need to understand at a molecular level the fabrication and functions of
new catalysts, adsorbents, porous ceramics, and heterogeneous polymers. These
categories of technologically important materials are linked by their crucial
dependencies on local order/disorder, which often governs macroscopic process
or device performance. Chmelka is broadly interested in heterogeneous solids,
whose sizable variations in local ordering and dynamics have pronounced
influences on the adsorption, reaction, optical, or mechanical properties of
these materials. The development and application of state-of-the-art techniques
of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy allow him to observe many
common molecular features among these diverse systems, which provide new
insights and design intuition for materials chemistry and engineering
objectives.
Biography
Bradley Chmelka graduated summa cum laude from Arizona State University
in 1982 with a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering. From 1982 to 1984 he worked
as a startup engineer with Unocal Corporation at the Parachute Creek Shale Oil
Project. Chmelka received a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University
of California, Berkeley, in 1990. Postdoctoral fellowship awards from the
Division of Chemistry of NSF and from the NSF-NATO Program supported his
research work in applications of NMR spectroscopy to inorganic and polymeric
solids at Berkeley (1990) and at the Max-Plank-Institüt fur Polymerforschung in
Mainz, Germany (1991). He is the recipient of numerous awards including the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Award (1996), the Camille and Henry Dreyfus
Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award (1993), and the New Young Investigator Award
from the NSF Division of Materials Research (1992). Chmelka joined the faculty
at UC Santa Barbara in 1992 and is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and a faculty
researcher at the Materials Research Lab.
