Arumugam Manthiram Wins Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award

Arumugam Manthiram, director of the Texas Materials Institute and the Joe C. Walter Chair in Engineering, was awarded the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award by The University of Texas at Austin’s Graduate School.

The award is given to only one faculty member at the university and is part of a series of professional awards granted annually by The University of Texas at Austin Graduate School. It is accompanied by a $3,000 prize to recognize exemplary faculty service at graduate level.

Manthiram joined the university in 1986 as a postdoc, was named an assistant professor in 1991 and became a full professor in 2000. Currently he holds the Joe E. Walter Chair in Engineering and serves as the Director of the Texas Materials Institute and the Material Sciences Engineering Graduate Program.

In 2011 Manthiram received the Mechanical Engineering Department’s Teaching Award to a tenure-track professor. Nominations for that award were made by graduate and undergraduate students. Also in 2011, Manthiram, John Goodenough and Jianshi Zhou (all affiliated with the Texas Materials Institute) received nearly $3 million from the National Science Foundation to study materials that are vital to the development of a broad range of technologies, including everything from electronic devices to large-scale energy storage.

Manthiram directs a large, productive research group in electrochemical energy technologies with 30 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. His current research is focused on lithium-ion batteries, fuel cells, solar cells, and supercapacitors. Specifically, his group is engaged in developing new, low-cost, efficient materials for these clean energy technologies, novel chemical synthesis and processing approaches for nanomaterials, and a fundamental understanding of their structure-property-performance relationships.

Tags: Arumugam Manthiram, Department of Chemical Engineering, Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, teaching awards, The University of Texas at Austin