His research focuses on ferroic functional materials and their applications in clean energy and energy efficiency applications. Current research directions include caloric materials, such as elastocaloric materials for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, refrigeration; application and magnetocaloric materials for gas liquefaction; advanced soft magnetic materials, such as high silicon electrical steel for inductors, transformers, and motors; permanent magnetic materials, such as Mn-based, rare-earth-free permanent magnetic materials and rare-earth permanent magnets with high toughness; high temperature anti-ferroelectric capacitor materials; and ferroelastic shape memory alloys. The overall materials development strategy is theory guided high throughput experimentation, utilizing DFT-based computation to identify alloy composition space and combinatorial bulk synthesis and scanning materials characterization techniques to discover, and down-select candidate compositions. He holds joint positions with Ames Laboratory and the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Iowa State University.
Robert Baldwin is a Principal Scientist in the National Bioenergy Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado; he has worked at NREL since 2008. Dr. Baldwin holds the degrees Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Chemical Engineering from Iowa State University (USA) and the PhD degree in Chemical Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. Prior to joining NREL Bob spent 30 years as a faculty member at the Colorado School of Mines including 10 years as Head of the Chemical Engineering department and retired as Professor Emeritus in 2005. Bob is a member of the project team that founded the Petroleum Institute (PI) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and served as Program Director in Chemical Engineering
He is a directorate fellow and department manager at Idaho National Laboratory and dedicated to conducting radiation effects research, leading to the development of radiation tolerant materials, for 25 years. Throughout his career, he has demonstrated a successful multidisciplinary approach, involving extensive experimental investigations, exhaustive post-irradiation microstructural characterization, and theoretical modeling. He has extensive experience using multiple techniques, such as light ions, heavy ions, in-situ ion irradiation/microscopy, and neutron irradiation to conduct research focused on the relationships between radiation damage, material microstructure, and material performance on a broad range of reactor structural materials and nuclear fuels. In addition to this effective multidisciplinary approach, he is a recognized international expert in the nanoscale characterization of irradiated fuels and materials using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) methods. His important contributions include the evaluation of radiation effects in advanced carbide and nitride candidate materials for the Generation IV gas-cooled fast reactor program; characterization of the fission gas superlattice bubbles in irradiated U-Mo fuel; work as a principal investigator on a project that helped scientists to understand the role of irradiated defect development on thermal conductivity degradation in UO2; and evaluation of the radiation stability of advanced oxide dispersion strengthened alloys using ion irradiation that revealed the superior radiation performance of these alloys to high radiation dose. He also leads a team of researchers at Idaho National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory conducting research under a U.S. Department of Energy Basic Energy Sciences project he initiated on gas bubble self-organization.
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