2023-04-05 08:00:00
Elizabeth Opila
Rolls-Royce Commonwealth Professor of Engineering
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
University of Virginia
BIO: Elizabeth Opila is the Rolls-Royce Commonwealth Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Director of the Rolls-Royce University Technology Center for Advanced Materials Systems at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she has been since 2010. Prior to that she held the position of Materials Research Engineer at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, OH for 19 years where she worked primarily on ceramics for applications in turbine engines, rocket engines, hot structures for thermal protections systems, and other power and propulsion applications. Her current research focus includes understanding thermodynamic and kinetic mechanisms for material degradation in extreme environments, development of life prediction methodology based on understanding of fundamental high temperature chemical reaction mechanisms, and materials development for protection of materials from extreme environments. Prof. Opila received her BS in Ceramic Engineering from the University of Illinois, her MS in Materials Science from the University of California Berkeley, and her PhD in Materials Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is Fellow of the American Ceramic Society and the Electrochemical Society and recipient of the 2021 American Ceramic Society’s Arthur L. Friedberg Award. She has over 140 publications, is editor of 10 proceedings volumes, and coinventor on six patents.
