Linda S. Schadler

Linda Schadler graduated from Cornell University in 1985 with a B.S. in materials science and engineering and received a PhD in materials science and engineering in 1990 from the University of Pennsylvania. After two years of post-doctoral work at IBM Yorktown Heights, Schadler served as a faculty member at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA before spending 22 years at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Schadler is an experimentalist and her research focuses on the mechanical, optical, and electrical behavior of nanofilled polymer composites. She has co-authored more than 170 journal publications, several book chapters, and one book. Dr. Schadler is a National Science Foundation National Young Investigator award winner (1994) and a Fellow of the Materials Research Society and ASM International.

Linda was an associate editor for the Journal of Materials Research. She is a former member of ASM International's Board of Trustees and the National Materials Advisory Board. She was the education and outreach coordinator for the National Science Foundation's Center “Directed Assembly of Nanostructures” headquartered at Rensselaer. As part of that position she was one of the executive producers for the Molecularium – a new style of planetarium show that takes the audience (primarily students in K-5) on a magical musical adventure into the world of atoms and molecules with the help of oxy, hydro and hydra (www.molecularium.com). Children learn that “everything is made of atoms and molecules” and about the three states of matter “solids slow, liquids flow, gas is fast!”