Professor Nitin Padture Honored by IIT Bombay

Nitin Padture, professor of engineering and director of the Center for Advanced Materials Research at Brown University, received a Distinguished Service Award from his undergraduate alma mater, the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay. Since 1999 the awards have been given to IIT Bombay alumni who have contributed in a notable and sustained manner to the progress of the Institute.

Padture was honored as the co-leader of the Class of 1985 Legacy Projects, which include promoting entrepreneurship, supporting recruitment of top junior faculty at IITB, and supporting a Faculty Wellness Fund to benefit retired IITB faculty members and their families lacking medical coverage. Padture received the award last month at IITB’s alumni day.

Padture's research and teaching interests are in the broad areas of synthesis/processing and properties of advanced materials used in applications ranging from jet engines to solar cells to computer chips, impacting transportation, energy, and information technology sectors. He has published 125 journal papers, which have been cited over 5,000 times, is co-inventor of four patents, and he has delivered over 150 invited/keynote/plenary talks in the U.S. and abroad. Padture is the recipient of several awards and is Fellow of the American Ceramic Society and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is editor of a prominent international journal, Scripta Materialia.

Professor Nitin Padture Named Editor of Scripta Materialia

Brown University School of Engineering Professor Nitin Padture has been named editor of Scripta Materialia, one of the leading journals in the field of materials science and engineering. In this role, Padture will serve a four-year term and will handle approximately 300 manuscripts per year.

“It is a great opportunity to contribute toward the shaping of a fast moving field, and I am humbled by the honor,” said Padture.

Padture, Professor of Engineering and Director of the Center for Advanced Materials Research (CAMR) at Brown, joined the Brown faculty in January of 2012. Previously he was College of Engineering Distinguished Professor at The Ohio State University, and also the founding director of the NSF-funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at OSU.

Padture received B.Tech. in metallurgical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (1985), M.S. in ceramic engineering from Alfred University (1987), and Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from Lehigh University (1991).

He was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for three years, before joining the University of Connecticut faculty in January 1995 as an assistant professor. He became an associate professor in 1998 and was promoted to professor in 2003. He served as interim department head at UConn before moving to Ohio State in January 2005.

Padture’s teaching and research interests are in the broad areas of synthesis/processing and properties of advanced materials used in applications ranging from jet engines to computer chips, impacting transportation, energy, and information technology sectors. Specifically, he has active research in tailoring of structural ceramic composites and coatings, and functional nanomaterials including graphene and perovskites.

Padture has published over 125 journal papers, which have been cited over 5,000 times. Padture is a co-inventor of four patents, and he has delivered some 150 invited/keynote/plenary talks in the U.S. and abroad. A fellow of the American Ceramic Society, he has received that society’s Roland B. Snow, Robert L. Coble, and Richard M. Fulrath awards. Padture is also a recipient of the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, and he is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Previously, Padture served as a principal editor of Journal of Materials Research and an associate editor of Journal of the American Ceramic Society.

Professor Nitin Padture Named Director of Center for Advanced Materials Research

Brown University School of Engineering Professor Nitin Padture, Professor of Engineering, has agreed to become the new director of the Center for Advanced Materials Research (CAMR).

“I want to thank Professor Padture for taking on this important leadership position at Brown and the School of Engineering,” said Larry Larson, Dean of Engineering. “Since arriving earlier this year, Professor Padture has demonstrated amazing resourcefulness in building up a world-leading research program in a short period of time. We will all benefit from his energetic direction as the new director of the Center for Advanced Materials Research (CAMR).”

Padture joined the Brown faculty in January of 2012. Previously he was College of Engineering Distinguished Professor at The Ohio State University, and also the founding director of the NSF-funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at OSU.

“At Brown he has already made important contributions to IMNI [Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation] and to CAMR,” said Clyde Briant, Vice President for Research.

“I am deeply honored to have the chance to serve the vibrant materials community at Brown, and I hope to create an environment that fosters interdisciplinary material research of the highest quality and impact,” said Padture.

Padture received B.Tech. in metallurgical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (1985), M.S. in ceramic engineering from Alfred University (1987), and Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from Lehigh University (1991).

He was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for three years, before joining the University of Connecticut faculty in January 1995 as an assistant professor. He became an associate professor in 1998 and was promoted to professor in 2003. He served as interim department head at UConn before moving to Ohio State in January 2005.

Padture’s teaching and research interests are in the broad areas of synthesis/processing and properties of advanced materials used in applications ranging from jet engines to computer chips, impacting transportation, energy, and information technology sectors. Specifically, he has active research in tailoring of structural ceramic, composites, and coatings, and functional nanomaterials including graphene and perovskites.

Padture has published over 120 journal papers, which have been cited about 5,000 times. Padture is a co-inventor of four patents, and he has delivered some 150 invited/keynote/plenary talks in the U.S. and abroad. A fellow of the American Ceramic Society, he has received that society’s Roland B. Snow, Robert L. Coble, and Richard M. Fulrath awards. Padture is also a recipient of the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Padture is a principal editor of Journal of Materials Research and an associate editor of Journal of the American Ceramic Society.

Meet the Faculty: Nitin Padture

Ceramics is an engineering field with limitless possibilities and versatility, Nitin Padture says. Ceramics, for example, can be used as an insulator and as a superconductor.

To some, ceramics is the stuff of art, the ingredient for fashioning vases, figures and other pretty objects. To Nitin Padture, ceramics is an engineer’s putty, a material prized for its conductivity and its resistance to heat.

Padture, incoming professor of engineering, has devoted much of his nearly 30-year career to researching the uses of ceramics. He has come up with several innovations, including a thermal coating to optimize the performance of jet engines and to protect the super-hot turbines in power plants.

“Since I was an undergraduate, I’ve always been interested in ceramics,” said Padture, who was the founding director of the National Science Foundation-funded Center for Emergent Materials at The Ohio State University before coming to Brown. “I sensed there were a lot of possibilities. It’s such a versatile field, and it can have such a wide range of properties, from being an insulator to a superconductor. It always attracted me, and so I followed it.”

Padture, born in India, grew up on the industry floor and often accompanied his father, a civil engineer, to the foundries he managed, where workers manufactured castings for big companies. “I would watch these enormous machines melt this steel, white hot sparks everywhere. I’ve always been fascinated by these materials. It was the highlight of our summer.”

When he wasn’t at the factory, he tinkered at home. Padture had his own workshop, building motors, generators and telephones. As a boy of 10 or 11, he built a telephone using old-fashioned shaving blades stuck vertically into a hollow box, with a pencil lead balanced between the blades to convert the vibrations to an electrical signal that corresponds to sound. “I could speak into it, and you could hear it in the room next door,” he said.

He graduated to bigger things at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, an institution with which Brown established a multifaceted partnership in 2010. There, Padture discovered ceramics after learning that the school did not offer materials science.

He worked with ceramics ever since. In 2007, Padture and colleagues published a paper showing that zirconium dioxide — synthetic diamonds — could be used to coat jet engine turbines blades, which meant the engines could run at higher temperatures and more efficiently. In another paper, he discovered a new class of ceramic coatings that could protect jet engines from volcanic ash, a worry to the airline industry after a volcanic eruption in Iceland grounded European air travel for days last year.

The ceramic coatings also could be used by the power industry, where gas turbines generate 23 percent of the country’s electricity. To operate most efficiently, temperatures need to reach 1,400 degrees Celsius. The ceramic coating prevents the two-story-high gas turbines from melting the metallic components within.

Padture also is investigating graphene, the single-atom thick carbon sheets that are the current darlings of materials science for potential uses in electronics and other fields. He has developed a technique to stamp many graphene sheets onto a substrate at once, in precise locations. The method could usher in high-throughput manufacturing of graphene into computer chips.

“We’re still working on it, but it has the potential to become a viable method for making site-specific graphene sheets,” Padture said. He expects to collaborate with engineering professors Huajian Gao, Robert Hurt, Brian Sheldon, and Vivek Shenoy. “That was a draw — people at Brown who work in areas similar to mine — and I can bring something to the table.”

When not teaching or in his lab, Padture likely will be cruising the countryside on his cherished motorcycle, an Aprilia Futura RST 1000. Chances are neither his wife, Sherilyn, nor his son, Siddharth, an undergraduate at Boston University, will be riding along. “She doesn’t mind me doing this, but she’s not that keen on it,” he said.

By Richard Lewis