Professors Michael McGehee and Timothy White.
The department is pleased to welcome two new professors to the faculty: Michael D. McGehee and Timothy J. White.
McGehee joins the department from Stanford University, where he has served on the materials science and engineering faculty since 2000. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Princeton and a PhD in materials science from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
McGehee’s research focuses on perovskite solar cells and dynamic windows with adjustable tinting, and his group aims to develop technology that provides humanity with clean energy and solves environmental problems.
A highly-cited and impactful researcher, McGehee is a fellow of the Materials Research Society and the recipient of the MRS Outstanding Young Investigator Award. His former students have started a dozen companies and won the Forbes “30 under 30” recognition five times.
A fellow of the Renewable & Sustainable Energy Institute and Materials Science and Engineering Program, McGehee is based in the Sustainability, Energy & Environment Community on East Campus.
He joined the department this spring and began conducting research in Boulder this summer. He will begin teaching courses related to solar energy and materials engineering in January.
“Professor McGehee is a highly recognized world leader in solar cells and has been at the forefront of the revolution of perovskite solar cells,” said department Chair Charles Musgrave. “Hiring Mike is a tremendous achievement for our department and CU and will further establish CU as a leading institution for materials science.”
White, appointed as the first Gallogly Professor in the College of Engineering and Applied Science, joins CU Boulder from the Air Force Research Laboratory, where he has served in several roles since joining the lab as a postdoctoral researcher in 2006. Most recently, White served as the lead of the 30-member Structured Optical Materials and Processes Team, focusing on technology development and maturation of stimuli-responsive materials and their integration in aerospace systems.
White concurrently held appointments as a research faculty member at the University of Dayton and an adjunct faculty member at Case Western Reserve University.
White’s research interests have generally focused on stimuli-responsive effects in soft materials. Initial research directions at CU Boulder will build upon and extend from his research activities at AFRL relating to the directed self-assembly of liquid crystalline elastomers, networks, and gels and realizing reconfigurable optical properties in low-molar mass liquid crystal/polymer composites. White intends to extend his research in exploiting the dynamic character of these materials in the health sciences and in energy applications.
He has published more than 130 papers in peer-reviewed journals and has more than 10 patents awarded or pending.
An internationally recognized researcher, he earned the 2016 Outstanding Young Investigator Award from the Materials Research Society and Early Career Awards from SPIE and the U.S. Air Force in 2013 and 2012, respectively.
White earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Central College (where he was an NCAA All-American in golf) and master’s and doctoral degrees in chemical and biochemical engineering from the University of Iowa.
White is rostered in Chemical & Biological Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering and will join the faculty on July 1.
“Tim has been on an absolutely meteoric trajectory during his relatively short career, and hiring him is a major coup for CU Chemical and Biological Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering, further cementing our leadership in soft materials,” Musgrave said.
“With the hiring of Mike McGehee and Tim White, Chemical and Biological Engineering is now home to four winners of the highly prestigious MRS Outstanding Young Investigator Award – a huge testament to our strength in materials science.”