John Halloran is Van Vlack Professor Emeritus in the Materials Science and Engineering Department, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. From 2000-2005 he served as department chair. He retired from Michigan in 2018. He has a B.S. in Ceramic Engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla (1973) and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1977). Before joining the faculty at Michigan in 1990, he served on the faculty of the Pennsylvania State University and Case Western Reserve University. From 1985-1990 he was the Vice President-Technology of CPS Superconductor Corporation, an entrepreneurial firm in the Boston area. During 1997-1998 he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar and Visiting Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford University. He has published about 250 papers and 13 patents. His major interests have concerned novel ceramic processing methods, Additive Manufacturing for ceramics, ultrahigh temperature ceramics and ceramic matrix composites. Halloran is a Fellow of The American Ceramic Society and an Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of the American Ceramic Society. He has also served on the Board of Directors for The American Ceramic Society.

He is currently a co-founder of DDM Systems, Inc. a spin-off from research project at Michigan and Georgia Tech on Additive Manufacturing for ceramics. From 1999-2011, he was Chief Technologist and Board Member for Adaptive Materials, Inc. (AMI) of Ann Arbor, a company he co-founded to manufacture portable solid oxide fuel cells. AMI was acquired by Ultra Electronics in January 2011. From 1988-1990 he was co-founder and Vice President-Technology of CPS Superconductor Corporation, a spin-off from Ceramic Process Systems Corporation in the Boston Area. From 1985-1990 he was a Senior Research Manager for Ceramic Process Systems Corporation (CPSC), a VC-backed company co-founded by Clayton Christensen of the Boston Consulting Group and Kent Bowen of MIT.