Peter Liaw

Dr. Liaw graduated from the Chiayi High School, obtained his B.S. in Physics from the National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, and his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Northwestern University, USA, in 1980.

After working at the Westinghouse Research and Development (R&D) Center for thirteen years, he joins the faculty and becomes an Endowed Ivan Racheff Chair of Excellence in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at The University of Tennessee (UT), Knoxville, since March 1993. He has been working in the areas of fatigue, fracture, nondestructive evaluation, and life-prediction methodologies of structural alloys and composites. Since joining UT, his research interests include mechanical behavior, nondestructive evaluation, biomaterials, and processing of high-temperature alloys and ceramic-matrix composites and coatings with the kind and great help of his colleagues at UT and the nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He has published over five hundred papers, edited twenty books, and presented numerous invited talks at various national and international conferences.

He was awarded the Royal E. Cabell Fellowship at Northwestern University. He is a recipient of numerous “Outstanding Performance” awards from the Westinghouse R&D Center. He was the Chairman of The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS) “Mechanical Metallurgy” Committee, and the Chairman of the American Society for Metals (ASM) “Flow and Fracture” Committee. He has been the Chairman and Member of the TMS Award Committee on “Application to Practice, Educator, and Leadership Awards.” He is a fellow of ASM. He has been given the Outstanding Teacher Award, the Moses E. and Mayme Brooks Distinguished Professor Award, the Engineering Research Fellow Award, the National Alumni Association Distinguished Service Professor Award, the L. R. Hesler Award, and the John Fisher Professorship at UT, and the TMS Distinguished Service Award.

He has been the Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) Program, the Director of the NSF International Materials Institutes (IMI) Program, and the Director of the NSF Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Program at UT. Several of his graduate students have been given awards for their research and presentations at various professional societies and conferences. Moreover, his students are teaching and doing research at universities, industries, and government laboratories.