Brinker, Osbourn elected to National Academy of Engineering

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Jeff Brinker and Gordon Osbourn of the Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories have been elected members of the National Academy of Engineering. This brings the total United States membership to 1,857 active members and 250 members emeriti, and the number of foreign associates to 158.

Election to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is one of the highest professional distinctions that can be accorded an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made “important contributions to engineering theory and practice” and those who have demonstrated “unusual accomplishment in the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology,” according to an NAE news release.

Brinker, a senior scientist in Sandia’s inorganic materials chemistry division, was honored for outstanding contributions to the science of sol-gel processing, and for the invention of porous materials with controlled structure. Brinker also is jointly employed as a Professor of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering and Chemistry at the University of New Mexico.

Osbourn, Laboratory Fellow and team leader in Sandia’s Lasers and Optics Department, was honored for originating the field of strained-layer superlattices and related structures, which have led to revolutionary advances in electronics and optoelectronics.

Both Brinker and Osbourn joined Sandia in 1979.

Brinker earned a Ph.D. in ceramic science and engineering from Rutgers University and has received many awards for his work, including the NOVA and R&D 100 Awards, the American Chemical Society’s Ralph K. Iler Award in the Chemistry of Colloidal Materials, and five DOE Basic Energy Sciences Awards.

Osbourn holds a Ph.D. in physics from the California Institute of Technology and has received many awards, including DOE Energy 23 recognition (ranked seventh broadest-impact DOE work of the 20th century), the American Physical Society International Prize for new materials, and the DOE E.O. Lawrence award.