Renowned Materials Science and Engineering Expert Zuhair A. Munir Honored as ACerS Distinguished Life Member
Zuhair A. Munir, Distinguished Professor emeritus of materials science and engineering and dean emeritus of the College of Engineering at the University of California, Davis, has been named a Distinguished Life Member by the American Ceramic Society, or ACerS.
Distinguished Life Members, the organization's highest honor, are elected by the ACerS board of directors for their lifetime contributions to the ceramic and glass profession.
Munir has received several awards from ACerS, including the W. David Kingery Award, the James I. Mueller Award, the John Jeppson Award and the Outstanding Educator in Ceramic Engineering Award. This culmination of his life's work feels different, he says.
"With the Distinguished Life Membership, I feel a special sense of gratitude because it provides a fitting milestone for my work and for my association with the society."
A Legacy of Research
Munir joined UC Davis in 1972 and served as dean of the College of Engineering from 2000 to 2002. He is known for his investigations into the role of electromagnetic fields in materials processing, including the spark plasma sintering process, or SPS, an advanced technique that uses electric fields to consolidate powders to produce dense, high-quality materials.
In the 1990s, thanks to a $500,000 grant from the Army Research Office, he made a major acquisition for the College of Engineering: the first spark plasma sintering facility in the Western Hemisphere, which soon became the focus of a large collaborative effort between UC Davis and scientists from multiple countries. With this facility, Munir conducted research on nanomaterials, earning a Nano 50 Award from Nanotech Briefs magazine, which recognizes technologies most likely to impact the state of the art in nanotechnology.
"Over decades of teaching and doing research, I have had the good fortune of working with scores of outstanding young students and scholars who contributed immensely to my accomplishments. This honor belongs to them also." - Zuhair A. Munir
He has been acknowledged for his work in self-propagating high-temperature synthesis, or SHS, a method of producing materials like ceramic and composite materials through a self-sustaining exothermic reaction, receiving such awards as the gold medal from the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Prometheus Award from the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan.
Munir's research on SHS also earned him the UC Davis Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and Scholarly Achievement, given to a faculty member who combines extraordinary scholarship with outstanding undergraduate teaching. He also received the UC Davis Academic Senate Distinguished Research Award, which celebrates transformative research by a UC Davis faculty member. At the time of receiving the latter honor, Munir was the second-ever College of Engineering professor to do so.
Additionally, the College of Engineering established the Zuhair A. Munir Award to be given to the best doctoral dissertation each year.; It is named for Munir's 20-year tenure as the College of Engineering's associate dean for research and graduate studies.
Materials Science Beyond Borders
Munir has been esteemed with dedicated symposia and workshops, including the symposium at the 10th Pacific Rim Conference on Ceramic and Glass Technology, a workshop at the University of Valenciennes in France, and the Fourth International Workshop on Spark Plasma Sintering, held in Italy, as well as its proceedings book.
His long career in materials science research and teaching also includes authoring over 500 papers, and he is listed as the author of the top 1% of the most highly cited papers in the field of materials science.
He is the co-author of 16 U.S. patents and one German patent and has served as the editor and associate editor for several materials science journals, including the Journal of Interdisciplinary Materials Science, Journal of Materials Science, Journal of the American Ceramic Society, Journal of Materials Synthesis and Processing, Journal of Materials Research and the Journal of the Electrochemical Society.
In his 55-plus years of membership to ACerS, Munir has served on several committees, co-organized nine international conferences on advanced ceramics and composites and co-edited five proceedings books.
Munir gives credit to the many students and scholars he has mentored for his award, which he will receive during the ACerS Annual Meeting, held in October this year in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
"Over decades of teaching and doing research, I have had the good fortune of working with scores of outstanding young students and scholars who contributed immensely to my accomplishments. This honor belongs to them also."