Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of distinguished achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment. Fellowship winners for 2005 include 186 artists, scholars and scientists selected from more than 3,000 applicants. Decisions are based on recommendations from hundreds of expert advisers and are approved by the foundation's Board of Trustees.
The purpose of a Guggenheim Fellowship is to enable a fellow to secure a block of time, free from other duties, to pursue their own scholarly or creative work. Chen will use his fellowship to study the structures and properties of ferroelectric and multiferroic thin films that have potential applications in various functional devices including actuators, sensors, spitronics, electrooptics and storage devices. He will spend an extended period of time with researchers at Rutgers University and the University of California-Berkeley. He will also travel to Hong Kong, China and Germany to attend conferences and workshops as well as to visit a number of research groups during his fellowship.
Chen's aim is to develop theories and multiscale computational models for predicting the strictures and behaviors of ferroelectric and multiferroic thin films.
In his previous work, Chen established an international reputation in computational modeling of the evolution of structurally non-uniform materials. He used complex computational models as a tool to predict the influence of a variety of processing variables for such things as thin film microstructures, metal alloy design and the domain structures and properties of ferroic materials.
He received his B.S. in materials science and engineering from Zhejiang University in China in 1982, an M.S. in materials science and engineering from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1985 and a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1990. Chen joined Penn State in 1992 and became an associate professor in 1998. In 2002, he became full professor.
He received the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in 1995 and the National Science Foundation special research creativity award in 1999. He received the Penn State Faculty Scholar Medal in Engineering in 2003 and was named Outstanding Overseas Young Scholar by the National Natural Science Foundation of China in 2004.