Prof. Ram Seshadri named the first Fred and Linda R. Wudl Chair in Materials Science

Friday, April 7, 2017

The Materials Department is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Ram Seshadri as the inaugural recipient of the Fred and Linda R. Wudl Chair in Materials Science. Professor Seshadri joined the faculty of the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2002, where he currently holds appointments of Professor of Materials and and Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry.  He currently directs the National Science Foundation Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC/MRL) at UCSB. Seshadri has a BSc. (Hons.) in Chemistry from St. Stephens College (Delhi University) and a Ph.D. in Solid State Chemistry from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, where he carried out research under the supervision of Professor C. N. R. Rao. Following postdoctoral stays at the CRISMAT lab in Caen, France, and the University of Mainz in Germany, he spent three years in the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore as a faculty member before moving to Santa Barbara.  Professor Seshadri's research combines aspects of physics, chemistry, and materials science, within the broad theme of crystal chemistry, and crystal-structure–property relations in functional inorganic materials. The functions of interest include electrical, magnetic, thermal, optical, and redox properties, and combinations therein. He is also deeply interested in the development of advanced tools for the structural characterization of materials, and in the use of first-principles electronic structure calculations for understanding and prediction of materials function.  Seshadri was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2010, and the American Physical Society in 2015. He currently serves as Associate Editor of the ACS journal Chemistry of Materials, and on the Editorial Committee of Annual Reviews of Materials Research.

The Endowed Chair is a gift of Fred and Linda R. Wudl.  Linda Raimondo was born and raised in Southern California and graduated from UCLA with a degree in microbiology in 1967.  She obtained an M.S. from Harvard in 1969 and a Ph.D. in Genetics in 1972 from SUNY Buffalo.  She subsequently joined Amgen and moved through the ranks to Vice President of Quality prior to her retirement in 2007.  Fred Wudl was born in Cochabamba, Bolivia and immigrated to the U.S. in 1958.  He received B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from UCLA in 1964 and 1967, respectively.  After postdoctoral research at Harvard, he joined the faculty of  SUNY Buffalo.  He joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1972 and subsequently joined the faculty of UCSB in 1982.  In 1997 he moved to UCLA as the Cortaulds Professor of Chemistry.  He returned to the faculty of UCSB in 2006.  He is widely known for his research on organic conductors and superconductors.  His interest in electronically conducting polymers resulted in the discovery of the first transparent organic conductor and the first self-doped polymers.  He has also made seminal contributions the understanding of optical and electooptical properties of processable conjugated polymers as well as the organic chemistry of fullerenes.  He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences.  Fred and Linda were married in 1967 and the chair established in their names supports a faculty member of the Materials Department in the College of Engineering whose interdisciplinary academic scholarship merits a joint appointment in Engineering as well as the Life or Physical Sciences.

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