Michael Falk is the newest faculty member in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, arriving on campus this summer.
Prof. Falk is a Hopkins alumnus, having earned B.A. (in Physics) and M.S.E. (in Computer Science) degrees here before moving to the University of California – Santa Barbara, where he completed his Ph.D. in Physics in 1998 under Jim Langer. After leaving UCSB, Prof. Falk was a post-doctoral scholar at Harvard and a visiting scientist at NIST prior to joining the faculty in materials science and engineering at the University of Michigan in 2000. At Michigan, Prof. Falk received an NSF CAREER award as well as several awards for teaching and mentoring.
Prof. Falk’s research emphasizes theoretical and computational investigation of materials processes far from equilibrium. Active areas of research include deformation, failure and fracture in non-crystalline materials such as metallic glasses, interactions of stress and diffusion in semiconductor crystals, and mixing processes that accompany frictional sliding and wear.