Kenneth Shull Receives Fulbright Senior Scholar Award

April 27, 2009

Kenneth Shull, professor of materials science and engineering, has been awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award for 2009-10.

As a Scholar, Shull will work with several research groups Instituto de Física at the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí in San Luis Potosí, México. While there, Shull hopes to research, understand, and utilize the assembly of macromolecules at interfaces. Biological macromolecules have the ability to form hierarchically ordered structures, which is essential to their function, and similar principles can be utilized in other areas of materials science. The focus of the research will be on assemblies of macromolecules at air/water, liquid/water or solid/water interfaces.

Shull received BS and MS degrees in materials science from MIT, followed by a PhD in Materials Science from Cornell University, which he received in 1990. He worked as a research staff member at the IBM Almaden Research Center for three years before joining Northwestern in 1993. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, and of the Adhesion Society, and is also active in the American Chemical Society and Materials Research Society.

His research interests involve the interfacial properties of amorphous polymers, with a particular emphasis on adhesion. Recent interests include the large-strain deformation and fracture behavior of 'soft' materials including polymer gels, and the interfacial and bulk mechanical behavior of biopolymers.