UCLA Engineering: UCLA Engineer Fall 2004

Mark Goorsky Appointed Chair of Materials Science and Engineering

By Christopher Sutton

Professor Mark Goorsky has been named Chair of the materials science and engineering department in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. Goorsky, who joined the UCLA faculty in 1991, replaced the outgoing chair, professor King-Ning Tu, on July 1.

“It has been extremely rewarding to serve as Chair of this department,” said Tu. “Under Mark's leadership, I'm confident our department will continue to excel in its mission of teaching, research and service.”

Goorsky has been vice chair of undergraduate programs for the department since 1995. He also heads the electronic materials research group, which studies defects in solid state electronic materials and their effect on devices made from those materials. Goorsky will continue to lead the group, which this fall will have ten graduate students and four undergraduate students.

Goorsky leads a department that is showing signs of growth. A new faculty member has been recruited, and joint appointments have resulted in dynamic cross-disciplinary relationships with other UCLA departments, including chemistry, mathematics and mechanical and aerospace engineering. In the latest U.S. News and World Report rankings, the department was ranked 23rd (among public universities it ranked 14th). The department was unranked a year ago.

“If you look at the people we have, the awards we earn and the collaborative environment we’re creating, you can see we have a strong department,” said Goorsky. “The challenge is to take it further, and we’re poised to do so. Dean Dhir has given us the green light to grow the department and recruit exceptional people, and it will be exciting to guide that process.”

Goorsky has long been an advocate of outreach to promote hands-on science learning among pre-college students. In 1997, he founded the Grassroots Science Program to encourage young people to pursue careers in research.

“We go to fifth and sixth grade classrooms in the area,” said Goorsky. “Once you get students interested at that age level, they really get into it. They’re smart enough to make connections between the things they see every day and the things we show them during our classroom visits.”

Goorsky earned his B.S. in materials science and engineering from Northwestern University, and his Ph.D. from MIT. Originally from the town of Niles, Illinois, near Chicago, he now resides in Valencia with his wife and three children.