Alexander (Alex) King
Title(s):
Professor Emeritus
Office
2220bn Hoover528 Bissell Rd.
Ames, IA 500111096
Information
Education
- D.Phil. Metallurgy & Science of Materials, University of Oxford, England, 1979
- B.Met. Physical Metallurgy, University of Sheffield, England, 1975
Experience
Alex King is a professor of materials science & engineering at Iowa State University. He recently completed a five-year term as the founder and Director of the US Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Institute – one of DOE’s four Energy Innovation Hubs.
The Critical Materials Institute is a consortium of four DOE national labs, seven universities and a dozen corporations, and is considered to be a model of collaboration and productivity. It is one of four Energy Innovation Hubs formed to accelerate scientific discovery of critical energy technologies.
Alex was born and raised in London. He was an undergraduate at the University of Sheffield and earned his doctorate from Oxford. He was a postdoc at Oxford and then M.I.T. before joining the faculty at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he also served as the Vice Provost for Graduate Studies (Dean of the Graduate School). He was the Head of the School of Materials Engineering at Purdue in from 1999 to 2007, the Director of DOE’s Ames Laboratory from 2008 until 2013, and became the Founding Director of the Critical Materials Institute when the Ames Lab was awarded its funding.
King is a Fellow of the Institute of Mining Minerals and Materials; ASM International; and the Materials Research Society. He was also a Visiting Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in 1996 and a US Department of State Jefferson Science Fellow for 2005-06. He has been elected to the 2020 class of Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Alex King was the President of MRS for 2002, Chair of the University Materials Council of North America for 2006-07, Co-chair of the Gordon Conference on Physical Metallurgy for 2006, and Chair of the APS Interest Group on Energy Research and Applications for 2010.
Alex was the 2017 ASM & TMS Distinguished Lecturer in Materials & Society and also the winner of the 2019 Acta Materialia Hollomon Award for Materials and Society.
An oral history and video featuring Alex can be found here and here.
Publications
Book Critical Materials: Alexander King, Elsevier (2020) ISBN: 9780128187890 Scientific Papers (A complete list of Alex King’s scientific papers can be found using his ORCID number: 0000-0001-7101-6585.) His recent publications include: Overcoming mechanical fragility in Sm-Co permanent magnet materials: Baozhi Cui, Xubo Liu, Alexander H. King, Gaoyuan Ouyang, Cajetan I Nlebedim and Jun Cui, Acta Materialia 196 (2020) 528-538 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actamat.2020.06.058 Mechanisms of Skyrmion and Skyrmion Crystal Formation from the Conical Phase: Tae-Hoon Kim, Haijun Zhao, Ben Xu, Brandt A. Jensen, Alexander H. King, Matthew J. Kramer, Cewen Nan, Liqin Ke and Lin Zhou, Nano Letters 20 (2020) 4731-4738 https://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c00080 Our Elemental Footprint: A.H. King, Nature Materials 18 (2019) 408-409 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0334-3 Faster: Accelerating the Transition from Materials Discovery to Commercial Deployment: A.H. King, JOM 71 (2019) 10-13 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-018-3291-4 Effects of Grain Boundary Disorder on Dislocation Emission: V. Borovikov, M.I. Mendelev and A.H. King, Materials Letters 237 (2019) 303-305 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matlet.2018.11.114 Effects of Ag and Zr solutes on dislocation emission from Σ11(332)[110] symmetric tilt grain boundaries in Cu: bigger is not always better: V. Borovikov, M.I. Mendelev and A.H. King, Int. Jour. of Plasticity 109 (2018) 79-87 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijplas.2018.05.009 Solute effects on interfacial dislocation emission in nanomaterials: nucleation site competition and neutralization: V. Borovikov, M.I. Mendelev and A.H. King, Scripta Materialia 154 (2018) 12-15 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scriptamat.2018.05.011 Addressing Criticality in Rare Earth Elements via Permanent Magnets Recycling: I.C. Nlebedim and A.H. King, JOM 70 (2018) 115-123 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11837-017-2698-7 High performance aluminum–cerium alloys for high-temperature applications: Z.C. Sims, O.R. Rios, D. Weiss, P.E.A. Turchi, A. Perron, J.R.I. Lee, T.T. Li, J.A. Hammons, M. Bagge-Hansen, T.M. Willey, K. An, Y. Chen, A.H. King and S.K. McCall, Materials Horizons 4 (2017) 1070-1078 https://doi.org/10.1039/c7mh00391a Effects of solutes on dislocation nucleation from grain boundaries: V. Borovikov, M.I. Mendelev and A.H. King, Int. Jour. of Plasticity. 90 (2017) 146-155 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijplas.2016.12.009 Effects of Stable and Unstable Stacking Fault Energy on Dislocation Nucleation in Nano-Crystalline Metals: V. Borovikov, M.I. Mendelev and A.H. King, Modelling and Simulation in Mat. Sci. and Eng. 24 (2016) 085017 https://doi.org/10.1088/0965-0393/24/8/085017 When twins collide: Twin junctions in nanocrystalline nickel: S.L. Thomas, A. H. King and D.J. Srolovitz, Acta Materialia 113 (2016) 301-310 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actamat.2016.04.030 The importance of elemental sustainability and critical element recovery: A.J. Hunt, A.S. Matharu, A.H. King and J.H. Clark, Green Chemistry 17 (2015) 1949-50 https://doi.org/10.1039/c5gc90019k Optimization of strength and ductility in nanotwinned ultra-fine grained Ag: twin density and grain orientations: R.T. Ott, J. Geng M.F. Besser, M. J. Kramer, M. Wang, E. S. Park, R. LeSar and A. H. King, Acta Materialia 96 (2015) 378-389 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actamat.2015.06.030 Effect of Stacking Fault Energy on Mechanism of Plastic Deformation in Nanotwinned FCC Metals: V. Borovikov, M.I. Mendelev, A.H. King and R. LeSar, Modelling and Simulation in Mat. Sci. and Eng. 23 (2015) 055003 https://doi.org/10.1088/0965-0393/23/5/055003 Effects of Schmid Factor and Slip Nucleation on Deformation Mechanism in Columnar-Grained Nanotwinned Ag and Cu: V. Borovikov, M.I. Mendelev, A.H. King and R. LeSar, J. Appl. Phys. 117 (2015) 085302 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4913381 The Effects of solutes on the thermal stability of nanotwinned materials: V. Borovikov, M.I. Mendelev and A.H. King, Philos. Mag. 94 (2014) 2875-2885 https://doi.org/10.1080/14786435.2014.937784 The Interactions of Self-Interstitials with Twin Boundaries: M.I. Mendelev and A.H. King, Philos. Mag. 93 (2013) 1268-1278 https://doi.org/10.1080/14786435.2012.747012 Thermal stability and strength of deformation microstructures in pure copper: C. Saldana, A.H. King and S. Chandrasekar, Acta Materialia 60 (2012) 4107-4116 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actamat.2012.04.022 Vacancies, twins, and the thermal stability of ultrafine-grained copper: C. Saldana, A.H. King, E.A. Stach, W.D. Compton and S. Chandrasekar, Appl. Phys. Lett. 99 (2011) 231911 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3669404 Deformation of hierarchically twinned martensite: P. Muellner and A.H. King, Acta Materialia 58 (2010) 5242-5261 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actamat.2010.05.048 Triple lines in materials science and engineering: A.H. King, Scripta Materialia 62 (2010) 889-893 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scriptamat.2010.02.020