Edwin R. Fuller, Jr.

Edwin Fuller received his B.S. degree in physics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He joined the National Bureau of Standards, now the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), as a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow, and remained at NIST until he retired.

His scientific contributions range from environmental effects on the fracture of glasses and ceramics to mesoscopic computer simulations of micromechanical behavior of heterogeneous, stochastic microstructures to theoretical modeling of fracture behavior and toughening mechanisms in brittle and quasi-brittle materials. He has co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed papers, and many NIST reports. He has been recognized with the NIST Jacob Rabinow Applied Research Award, the U.S. Department of Commerce Silver Medal, the ACerS Ross Coffin Purdy Award, and the Basic Science Division Robert B. Sosman Award. Mesoscale software, that he developed together with S.A. Langer, W.C. Carter, and A.R. Roosen, was awarded the 1999 Technologies of the Year Award by Industry Week. This software was one of the earliest computational tools developed to predict material behavior from microstructure — a theme that is commonly used throughout academia and industry today.

Fuller has served in leadership positions in ACerS (President, Board of Directors, and various committee chairs), in the Basic Science Division and the Art, Archaeology & Conservation Science Division, and in the Baltimore-Washington and Carolinas Sections. As President of ACerS, he spearheaded a reorganization of ACerS. He has served as a mentor for numerous U.S. and international high school students, graduate students, and post-doctoral students. He has been a guest researcher at universities and research institutions in the U.S. and abroad in multiple collaborative efforts. He was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Research Award, that is presented to leading international researchers.