Rate My Professor Angus Wilkinson

Angus Wilkinson is a 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 received a B.A. in Chemistry from Oxford University in 1988 and a D.Phil. in Chemistry from Oxford University in 1992, with his graduate research focusing on the application of synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction to problems in solid-state chemistry under Dr. A. K. Cheetham in the Department of Chemical Crystallography and Inorganic Chemistry. During his final two years of graduate studies, he held a senior scholarship from Christ Church, Oxford.

After completing his doctorate, Wilkinson served as a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford, from October 1991 to June 1993, during which he spent most of his time on leave at the Materials Research Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Barbara, investigating the processing and structure of oxide ferroelectric materials. In October 1993, he joined the Georgia Institute of Technology as an Assistant Professor, attained tenure in 1999, and was promoted to full Professor in 2004. His research spans inorganic and materials chemistry, with current projects including the synthesis and characterization of negative thermal expansion ceramics; in-situ studies of cement hydration under high-pressure and high-temperature oil well conditions using X-ray diffraction and ultrasonic techniques; and the development of reversible carbon dioxide adsorbents. Additional interests encompass new applications of synchrotron X-ray methods for thermal expansion under pressure, resonant scattering for material structure, and previous work on chiral templates for microporous materials, low-temperature ferroelectrics, low-oxidation-state gallium and indium oxides for ferroelectric and nonlinear optical applications, resonant X-ray scattering for thermoelectric materials, and cement durability under sulfate attack. Wilkinson has been honored with the NSF CAREER Award in 1996, the Sigma Xi Award for outstanding research by a junior faculty member in 1996, and the Linus Pauling Prize from the American Crystallographic Association in 1991.