jpmariaJon-Paul Maria is a professor of Materials Science and Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) and a Professor Emeritus at North Carolina State University (NCSU) where he spent 15 years serving on Materials Science and Engineering faculty. Prior to joining NCSU, Jon-Paul received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from Penn State in Ceramic Science. Jon-Paul’s research group, J.-P. Maria Group, pursues new materials discovery, property engineering, advances in synthesis science, and new integration strategies to merge diverse materials. Laboratory activities of interest include physical vapor deposition, ceramic synthesis by powder processing, structural characterization by diffraction, and microstructure measurement using scanning probe and scanning electron microscopy. The J.-P. Maria group manages a 1,500 square foot vacuum processing lab that hosts nine sputter tools, e-beam evaporation, and two laser ablation systems. The J.-P. Maria Group members currently pursue research in the areas of ferroelectric thin films, high permittivity materials, novel semiconductor contacts, oxide epitaxy, infra-red plasmonic materials and entropy engineered/stabilized crystals. With assistance from many collaborators, The J.-P. Maria Group published over 240 publications dealing with structure-property-processing relationships in electronic materials. In 2016 Maria co-founded Third Floor Materials, a startup company that endeavors to develop novel IR sensor materials and technologies.

Maria’s research focuses on the processing science issues associated with synthesizing integrated systems for intelligent microwave communication, telemetry, and radar systems. Specifically, his team designs and fabricate microwave circuit components using novel materials, processing conditions, and integration approaches. A specific focus of this work is to replace the expensive or difficult-to-manufacture materials with inexpensive alternatives that do not compromise performance. This requires that they fundamentally understand the materials science of processing as in many cases they are dealing with system components that have narrow windows of stability.