Anna Balazs
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anna C. Balazs | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1953 (age 72–73) |
| Alma mater | Bryn Mawr College (AB), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (S.M., PhD) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer modeling, soft matter, polymer physics, fluid dynamics |
| Institutions | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pittsburgh |
| Doctoral advisors | K.H. Johnson, George M. Whitesides, Robert J. Silbey |
| Website | www |
Anna Christina Balazs (born 1953) is an American materials scientist and engineer. She currently is Distinguished Professor at the University of Pittsburgh and holds the John A. Swanson Chair at the Swanson School of Engineering.[1][2][3]
Her research involves developing theoretical and computational models to capture the behavior of polymeric materials, nanocomposites and multi-component fluids in confined geometries.[4] In 2016, Balazs was the first woman to receive the Polymer Physics Prize from the American Physical Society “for imaginative and insightful use of theory to understand multi-component polymeric systems.”[5][4][6] In 2021 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences for contributions to computational materials science[7] and in 2022 was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for "creative and imaginative work in predicting the behavior of soft materials that are composed of multiple cooperatively - interacting components."[8]
Balazs is a Fellow of the American Physical Society,[9] the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Materials Research Society.[10]
Balazs was born to Holocaust survivors in Hungary.[11] Growing up, Balazs' preferred play-thing was plasticine, as it was moldable and can be set into permanent shapes. She also enjoyed entertaining herself with mechanical pencils.[12] She was inspired by her father who was a veterinarian to go into science.[11] Balazs received her B.A. degree with honors in Physics from Bryn Mawr College in 1975.[4] She received her master's and PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA in 1981.[4] During her Ph.D. she worked with George M. Whitesides,[11] K.H. Johnson, and Robert J. Silbey. After her Ph.D., she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Brandeis University (1981-1983) in the Chemistry Department with Irving Epstein. She became a research associate at the University of Massachusetts (1984-1986) in the Polymer Science and Engineering Department with Frank Karasz, William MacKnight, and Isaac Sanchez.
