Robert Carpick

Robert W. Carpick is the John Henry Towne Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics within the Engineering faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Toronto in 1991, M.A. in Physics in 1994, and Ph.D. in Physics in 1997 from the University of California, Berkeley, where his doctoral thesis focused on “The Study of Contact, Adhesion and Friction at the Atomic Scale by Atomic Force Microscopy.” After his Ph.D., he served as a postdoctoral appointee at Sandia National Laboratories from 1998 to 1999. Carpick began his academic career as an Assistant Professor in the Engineering Physics Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2000 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2005. He joined the University of Pennsylvania in 2007 as Associate Professor, became Full Professor in 2009, served as Department Chair from 2011 to 2019, and has held the John Henry Towne Professorship since 2013. He maintains a secondary appointment in Materials Science and Engineering, was Director of the University's Nanotechnology Institute from 2007 to 2011, Penn Fellow from 2009 to 2011, and currently serves as Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the department.

Prof. Carpick's research specializes in nanotribology at the intersection of mechanics, materials, and physics, employing scanning probe microscopy and surface science techniques to investigate friction, adhesion, lubrication, and wear at the atomic scale. His studies encompass ultrahard carbon-based thin films, graphene, 2D materials, and extreme conditions, with applications in MEMS/NEMS, hard disks, thin films, manufacturing, coatings, and lubricants. He has authored over 180 peer-reviewed publications and holds six patents, including key papers such as “Scratching the Surface: Fundamental Investigations of Tribology with Atomic Force Microscopy” (Chemical Reviews, 1997), “Frictional Characteristics of Atomically Thin Sheets” (Science, 2010), “Frictional ageing from interfacial bonding” (Nature, 2011), “Nanoscale wear as a stress-assisted chemical reaction” (Nature Nanotechnology, 2013), “Mechanisms of antiwear tribofilm growth revealed in situ” (Science, 2015), and “Acceleration of Diels-Alder reactions by mechanical distortion” (Science, 2023). He co-authored the textbook “Tribology on the Small Scale: A Modern Textbook on Friction, Lubrication, and Wear” (Oxford University Press, 2019). Major awards include Fellowships from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (2019), Materials Research Society (2017), Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (2016), American Vacuum Society (2014), and American Physical Society (2012), the ASME Burt L. Newkirk Award (2009), NSF CAREER Award (2002), and the 2025 Michael L. Barrett Faculty Award for Student Advocacy.