Davis Lecture Series
About Robert Davis
Robert Davis is the John and Clare Bertucci Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Before CMU, he joined NC State in 1972 and was named the first Kobe Steel Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at North Carolina State University from 1988 until retiring from NC State in 2004.
Davis is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society. While at NC State, he received the Alexander Quarles Holladay Medal for Excellence and the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research, and Extension. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in ceramic engineering from NC State and Pennsylvania State University. He received his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.
Delivering the inaugural lecture on April 14, 2010, in Engineering Building 1, Robert Davis presented the talk “Solid-State Lighting: Current Status and the Impact of the Technology on Energy Utilization and Environmental Conditions.” Sharing insight into conventional lighting, the presentation illustrated how waste heat, pollution, and greenhouse gases are generated and explored the future of solid-state lighting. With the potential to become an energy-efficient lighting technology of the future, solid-state lighting requires in-depth research, engineering, and development before it can be widely deployed.
Upcoming
Presenter will be announced in Spring 2027.
Past Presenters
Yury Gogotsi
Drexel University
March 27, 2026
“Building Blocks for Technology of the Future: MXenes and Beyond”
Moungi Bawendi
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
March 21, 2025
“Quantum Dots: A Synthesis Seeds A Journey of Nano-Explorations”
Professor Moungi Bawendi is a Nobel Laureate who shared the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Louis E. Brus and Alexei I. Ekimov for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots.
Hiroshi Amano
Nagoya University
April 4, 2024
“Wide and Ultrawide Bandgap Semiconductors: A Journey to the Unknown World“
Professor Hiroshi Amano is a Nobel Laureate who shared the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics with Professors Isamu Akasaki and Shuji Nakamura for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes.
Professor Amano’s lecture also served as the anchor event for the Department of Materials Science and Engineering’s centennial celebration.
Ramamoorthy Ramesh
Rice University
March 31, 2023
“Solid-State Lighting: Current Status and the Impact of the Technology on Energy Utilization and Environmental Conditions”
Clare Grey
Cambridge University
October 30, 2020
“Developing and applying new tools to understand how materials for Li and “Beyond-Li” battery technologies function”
Chris Van de Walle
University of California, Santa Barbara
March 29, 2019
“Semiconductor light emitters: From solid-state lighting to quantum communications”
Tobin Marks
Northwestern University
March 2, 2018
“How do we create and process materials for flexible, transparent electronic circuitry?
Nava Setter
EPFL – Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne
April 7, 2017
“Venus of Moravia and reconfigurable nanoelectronics: 30,000 years of ceramics engineering”
William Goddard
California Institute of Technology
February 26, 2016
“First Principles Based Multi-Scale Multi-Paradigm Methods for Applications to Complex Material”
William Nix
Stanford University
April 15, 2015
“Electrochemical Lithium Insertion: The Future of Lithium-Ion Battery Applications”
Herbert Gleiter
Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China
April 17, 2014
“Nanostructured Non-Crystalline Solids: The Door to Materials and Technologies Beyond Today’s Limits”
Mildred Dresselhaus (1930-2017)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
February 20, 2013
“My 50-Year Adventure with Nanoscience”
John Cahn (1928-2016)
National Institute of Standards and Technology
May 7, 2012
“Quasiperiodicity in Crystallography, Science and the Arts”
Arden Bement
Purdue University
April 13, 2011
“Global Policy Issues in a Shrinking World”