News
White Named ASC Fellow
The Society awards fellowship status to distinguished members who have made genuinely outstanding contributions to the composites community through research, practice, education, and service.
An internationally recognized materials engineer, White has played a leading role in the development of self-healing materials and multifunctional materials systems. His contributions in this nascent field have sparked world-wide interest in self-healing and other autonomic functionality from industry, academia, and government. When realized, the promise of these materials will enable fundamental and revolutionary advancements across a broad spectrum of industries from aerospace to microelectronics.
White also has made important contributions to three-dimensional microvascular materials systems, their functionality, fabrication, and analysis. Inspired by the circulatory networks found in biological systems, microvascular networks in engineered materials are used to supply nutrients, repair and healing, cooling, sensory feedback and other functionalities.
White has been widely recognized for his work. The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California, honored White and his team as a finalist for the 2001 Tech Award recognizing outstanding contributions in technology. The magazine Popular Science acknowledged his research on self-healing materials as one of the Top Ten Scientific Innovations for 2001. Scientific American recognized White’s work in microvascular systems with the SciAm 50 prize in 2007.
He also received the 2008 Innovation Discovery Award from the U of I Vice Chancellor for Research, the U of I Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership, and the Champaign County Economic Development Corporation. White was a finalist for the University of Padua’s 2009 international Bepi Columbo Prize.
White holds 23 patents and applications in the materials field and is a founding partner in two start-up companies seeking to transition university technologies to industry. Joining the faculty of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology in 2000, White leads the Autonomic Materials Group, bringing together students and faculty from a broad cross-section of scientific and engineering disciplines.
White joined the AE Department in 1990 after earning a PhD in engineering mechanics from The Pennsylvania State University. Majoring in mechanical engineering, he received a bachelor’s from the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1985 and a master’s degree from Washington University, St. Louis, in 1987.
White also holds appointments in the Mechanical Science and Engineering and the Materials Science and Engineering departments.
