graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1986 from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He worked for the DuPont Company as senior Staff Scientist for 12 years before joining the University of Delaware in 1999, where he has a joint appointment in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He has been involved in the field of thin films and nanostructured materials for 25 years. He has over 250 publications in these field and six patents awarded.