Lisa C. Klein

Lisa C. Klein, PhD, is presently the Chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) at Rutgers University, New Brunswick-Piscataway, NJ.  She received her PhD and SB degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Materials Science and Engineering.  In 1977, she was the first woman to join the Department of Ceramic Science & Engineering, later named MSE.  She has held visiting faculty positions at the University of Grenoble, Sandia National Laboratories and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  She also served on the National Materials Advisory Board, and was an Editor of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society from 1998-2019.

She is a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society and the Society of Glass Technology, and a Member of the World Academy of Ceramics.  Rutgers University awarded her a Human Dignity Award in 2015 from the Committee to Advance Our Common Purposes for “leveraging opportunities to encourage women, underrepresented minorities, and economically disadvantaged individuals to pursue their aspirations.”  She received the Life Achievement Award of the International Sol-Gel Society in 2017.  In October 2022, she delivered the Arthur L. Friedberg Ceramic Engineering Tutorial and Lecture at the MS&T Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA, titled “From Moon Rocks to Melting Gels”.

Her research focuses on sol-gel science and engineering, particularly sol-gel applications in electrolytes, electrochromics, membranes and nanocomposites.  More recently, she has focused on sol-gel processing of organic-inorganic hybrids and their behavior in corrosion coatings and surface textures.