Ricardo Castro named Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies
Story originally posted by the College of Engineering Staff.
The College of Engineering is pleased to announce materials science and engineering professor Ricardo Castro as the College’s Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies. His appointment was effective July 9.
In his new role, Castro will be responsible for stimulating the development, coordination and overall advancement of engineering graduate and research programs. Castro replaces Jean VanderGheynst, who recently accepted a position as Dean of the College of Engineering at UMass Dartmouth.
Castro currently leads the Nanoceramics Thermochemistry Laboratory in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. The lab is dedicated to providing a fundamental understanding from an experimental thermodynamics perspective of nanomaterials and their behavior during processing and operation at extreme environments, such as high temperatures and irradiation.
His interests expand to oxide-water interactions, a field in which he has developed sophisticated models to understand and predict how the thermodynamics of such interfaces affect phenomena such as gas sensing and photocatalysis.
Castro holds a Ph.D. in metallurgical and materials engineering and a bachelor’s degree in molecular sciences, both from the University of São Paulo in Brazil. Since joining UC Davis in 2009, his research has gained international recognition. He has received the Robert L. Coble Award by the American Ceramic Society and the Stig Sunner Memorial Award conferred by the Calorimetry Conference, among other important national and international awards. Castro has been honored as a UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellow (2013) and is involved in numerous societal activities including the presidency of the National Institute of Ceramics Engineers (2015-2017) and the editorial membership of respected scientific journals (Scientific Reports, Materials Letters and Journal of Materials Research).
Castro is also active on campus committees such as the Graduate Council-APD, ADVANCE Program Policies and Practices and the university’s General Education Committee. He is also active on the College’s Engineering Communication Design Committee, the College’s Strategic Planning efforts and the Undergraduate Education Policies and the Undergraduate Affairs Committee at the department level.