Dr. Ken Gall, Georgia Tech professor in the school of Materials Science and Engineering, has been awarded the 2011 Curtis W. McGraw Award for excellence in the development, design, and characterization of new materials for advanced biomedical applications and for the successful bridging of basic research results into the classroom and the marketplace.  

Dr. Gall’s research is at the intersection of mechanics and materials.  His work considers a diverse set of materials including shape memory alloys, shape memory polymers, lightweight castings, thin metallic films, composites, photopolymers, degradable polymers, and nanowires.  In all of his research efforts he aims to discover and understand basic phenomenon related to the complex and nonlinear deformation behavior of these material systems.

What makes Dr. Gall’s work unique is the way it cuts across basic science (chemistry, physics) and engineering (mechanical, bioengineering).  One of his significant basic scientific accomplishments published in Nature Materials is the discovery of phase stability and surface stress induced phase transformation in nanowires.  This work has spawned a myriad of researchers across the globe to examine the surface stress stability of nanostructures.  One of his basic engineering accomplishments is the development of a biocompatible shape memory polymer that was published in Advanced Functional Materials, and later was cleared through the FDA in a medical device by his startup company, MedShape Solutions.  It is rare to find basic materials research that makes it so quickly from publication to approval for use in humans.