Rate My Professor Angus Wilkinson

Professor Angus Wilkinson serves as Professor and Associate Chair for Academic Programs in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology, holding a joint appointment in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. He obtained his B.A. in Chemistry from Oxford University in 1988 and D.Phil. in Chemistry in 1992. His doctoral research under Dr. A. K. Cheetham in the Department of Chemical Crystallography and Inorganic Chemistry at Oxford centered on the application of synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction to solid-state chemistry problems. During the last two years of his graduate studies, he received a Senior Scholarship from Christ Church, Oxford. Subsequently, from October 1991 to June 1993, he was a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford, with most of that period spent on leave at the Materials Research Laboratory, University of California, Santa Barbara, investigating the processing and structure of oxide ferroelectric materials. In October 1993, Wilkinson joined the Georgia Institute of Technology as an Assistant Professor, attaining tenure in 1999 and promotion to Full Professor in 2004.

Wilkinson's research specializes in low and negative thermal expansion (NTE) materials, including fundamental studies of oxides, oxyfluorides, and fluorides, and the role of structural disorder in physical properties. His group conducts synthetic work at Georgia Tech complemented by neutron scattering at HFIR and SNS, X-ray scattering at APS, and collaborations for characterization, aimed at developing temperature-insensitive optical materials. Additional interests include new synchrotron X-ray methods, in-situ cement hydration studies under high pressure and temperature for oil well conditions, reversible CO2 adsorbents, thermoelectric materials, and metal-organic frameworks. Key publications include "Pronounced Negative Thermal Expansion from a Simple Structure: Cubic ScF3" (J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2010), "Synthesis and Properties of the Negative Thermal Expansion Material Cubic ZrMo2O8" (Chem. Mater., 1998), and "Crystal structures of molecular gold nanocrystal arrays" (Acc. Chem. Res., 1999). He has earned the NSF CAREER Award and Sigma Xi Award for Outstanding Research by a Junior Faculty Member, both in 1996. His contributions have significantly influenced materials chemistry through advanced scattering techniques.