Rate My Professor Joshua Robinson

Joshua A. Robinson is a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry, and Physics at The Pennsylvania State University. He received his B.S. in Physics from Towson University in 2001 and his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Penn State in 2005. Following a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Naval Research Laboratory from 2005 to 2007, he returned to Penn State as a Research Professor in the Applied Research Laboratory in 2007. In 2012, he joined the Department of Materials Science and Engineering as an Assistant Professor, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2016, and to Full Professor in 2020. Robinson currently serves as Director of the Penn State Silicon Carbide Innovation Alliance (SCIA), Director of Strategic Initiatives in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, Associate Director of the Center for Two-Dimensional and Layered Materials—which he co-founded in 2013—and Co-Director of the NSF Center for Atomically Thin Multifunctional Coatings (ATOMIC), co-founded in 2015. He has also been Director of User Programs for the NSF-funded 2D Crystal Consortium since 2016.

Robinson's research specializes in the synthesis and properties of two-dimensional (2D) materials, exploring process/property/performance relationships for applications in high-frequency electronics, quantum computing, quantum communications, chemical/biological sensing, catalysis, energy storage, and beyond-silicon CMOS technologies. His group employs a vertically integrated approach to chemical vapor deposition-grown 2D materials and pioneered confinement heteroepitaxy (CHet) to stabilize traditionally three-dimensional materials in 2D form. He has authored over 250 research articles, including highly cited works such as "Recent advances in two-dimensional materials beyond graphene" (ACS Nano, 2015), "Two-dimensional gallium nitride realized via graphene encapsulation" (Nature Materials, 2016), "Atomically thin half-van der Waals metals enabled by confinement heteroepitaxy" (Nature Materials, 2020), and "Transition metal dichalcogenides and beyond: synthesis, properties, and applications of single- and few-layer nanosheets" (Accounts of Chemical Research, 2015). Robinson has delivered more than 150 invited talks and received prestigious awards, including the NSF CAREER Award (2015), Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal for Engineering (2021), Rustum and Della Roy Innovation in Materials Research Award (2012), National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (2002-2005), and Alan Berman Research Publication Award (2007). His contributions have significantly advanced the field of 2D materials for next-generation technologies.