Jeffery Gibeling wins TMS Oleg D. Sherby Award
Materials science and engineering (MSE) professor Jeffery Gibeling has won the 2021 Oleg D. Sherby Award from the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS). The award, named in honor of materials science trailblazer Oleg Sherby, recognizes individuals or groups who have made significant contributions to understanding how materials behave at high temperatures.
Specifically, Gibeling’s group studies creep, which is the deformation of materials over time due to application of forces at high temperatures. Many materials, including ice, glass, metals, plastics and ceramics, exhibit creep deformation. Understanding this behavior is key to understanding the mechanical properties of the materials and how to control them when designing new materials for energy and transportation applications.
To do this, his group pioneered new high-resolution techniques for measuring the mechanisms behind these properties before, during and after creep under high temperatures. These approaches help them understand how the internal arrangement of atoms changes with deformation and how this contributes to the material’s properties in the new state. Gibeling’s techniques have been particularly innovative because they incorporate physics-based modeling of observed phenomena. Over the years, he has studied a wide range of materials, including metals, metal matrix composites and layered materials.
Gibeling has also contributed as a leader at UC Davis. Since joining the university in 1984, he has been executive associate dean of UC Davis Graduate Studies, chair of the UC Davis Academic Senate, Vice Provost of Graduate Education and Dean of Graduate Studies and MSE department chair. He began his tenure as interim dean of the College of Engineering in January 2021. He received his B.S. in mechanical engineering and M.S. and Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from Stanford University, where he was a student in some of Professor Sherby’s classes.
Founded in 1871, TMS is one of the first national engineering societies in the U.S. Today, it connects minerals, metals and materials scientists and engineers around the world through networking, publications and professional development opportunities. Gibeling is slated to receive the award during the awards ceremony at the 150th TMS Annual Meeting from March 14-18, 2021 in Orlando, Florida.