Eric J. Amis, director of Physical Sciences at the United Technologies Research Center (UTRC), will deliver the plenary address at the 2011 Materials Research Society Fall Meeting. His presentation is titled “Three Materials, Three Challenges.” The plenary session will be held in the Grand Ballroom of the Sheraton Hotel on Monday, Nov. 28 at 6:30 p.m.

Amis describes materials research as an enabler of technologies that address global needs. At UTRC, he considers the synergy between global technology needs and industry interests, concentrating on the areas of infrastructure, transportation, and energy. In his plenary presentation, Amis will consider examples of representative materials with tangible benefits and some challenges to enabling technologies within the DNA of corporate research.

Prior to joining UTRC in 2009, Amis spent 15 years in leadership roles at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory, including 10 years in the Polymers Division. Before joining NIST, he was a member of the chemistry faculty at the University of Southern California for 11 years. His PhD degree in chemistry is from the University of Wisconsin—Madison.

Amis is a fellow of the Materials Research Society, the American Physical Society (APS), and the Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS). He has served as chair of the Division of Polymer Physics of the APS and the Polymer Chemistry Division of the ACS, and he was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Polymer Science: Physics for 11 years. He also is past chair of the Versailles Project on Advanced Materials and Standards, and was vice president of the World Materials Research Institutes Forum. His research specialties are combinatorial and high-throughput methods for advanced materials, nanomaterials characterization, and soft matter physics. He has 150 peer-reviewed publications.