Dr. Christopher Schuh joined the DMSE faculty in 2002 and became Department Head in 2012. IHe received his doctorate degree from Northwestern University specializing in High-Temperature Mechanical Behavior of Metals and Composites Minor in Applied Mathematics and prior to coming to MIT was a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory performing research in the evaluation of nanocrystalline materials in various modes of mechanical loading, including simple tension, nanoindentation, and wear (by the nano-scratch technique) and experimental investigation on the effect of grain boundary structure and crystallography upon mechanical properties of metals and engineering alloys. He received the 2001 Henry Marion Howe Medal for the best article of 2000 in Metallurgical and Materials Transactions, awarded by the American Society for Metals.