The 2012 Materials Research Society Fall Meeting in Boston, November 26–30, will be chaired by Chennupati Jagadish (Australian National University), Thomas Lippert (Paul Scherrer Institut), Amit Misra (Los Alamos National Laboratory), Eric Stach (Brookhaven National Laboratory), and Ting Xu (University of California–Berkeley). Updated information on the meeting is available at www.mrs.org/meetings.

Chennupati Jagadish is an Australian Laureate Fellow, Distinguished Professor, and Head of the Semiconductor Optoelectronics and Nanotechnology Group at the Australian National University (ANU). His research interests are in compound semiconductors, lasers, photodetectors, solar cells, photonic integrated circuits, quantum dots, nanowires, THz photonics, photonic crystals, metamaterials, and plasmonics. He obtained his PhD degree in physics from the University of Delhi in 1986 and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, during 1988–1990. He moved to ANU in 1990 where he has established a major research program in compound semiconductor optoelectronics and nanotechnology. Jagadish has published more than 400 journal articles, holds five U.S. patents, has co-authored a book on semiconductor transparent thin films and co-edited a book on zinc oxide, edited 12 conference proceedings and guest edited five special issues of journals. He is an editor of Progress in Quantum Electronics, IEEE Electron Device Letters, and serves on editorial boards of 12 other journals. Jagadish received the IEEE Third Millennium Medal in 2000, the Peter Baume Award from ANU, and the Quantum Devices Award in 2010.

Thomas Lippert heads the materials group within the Department of General Energy Research at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), Switzerland. His research is focused on the interaction of photons with materials and the development of materials for laser applications, with a special focus on thin-film deposition. He received his PhD degree in physical chemistry from the University of Bayreuth, Germany. He served as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Materials and Chemical Research in Tsukuba, Japan. He then joined Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he became a Technical Staff Member. In 1999, he joined PSI. He received his Habilitation at ETH Zurich in physical chemistry in 2002 and became senior lecturer (Privatdozent). Lippert has published more than 220 articles, delivered over 100 invited talks, organized six international conferences, is a member of the editorial board/co-editor of two journals, and a member of the European Materials Research Society executive committee.

Amit Misra is the Director of the Center for Materials at Irradiation and Mechanical Extremes, an Energy Frontier Research Center at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). He joined LANL as a postdoctoral researcher in November 1996 and was promoted to a staff scientist in August 1998. His research expertise is in defects and interfaces in materials, transmission electron microscopy, nanomechanics, and structural materials for nuclear energy. He earned his MS and PhD degrees in materials science and engineering from the University of Michigan. He has co-authored over 225 peer-reviewed articles in archival journals, conference proceedings, and book chapters. Misra served as a 2009 Volume Organizer for MRS Bulletin, has co-organized five symposia at MRS, and is currently on the editorial board of MRS Bulletin. He is a fellow of the American Society of Metals, International; a fellow of LANL; and was awarded the 2008 LANL Fellows’ Prize for outstanding research in nanomechanics and the 2011 Distinguished Scientist/Engineer Award from The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society.

Eric Stach leads the Electron Microscopy Group in the Center for Functional Nanomaterials at Brookhaven National Laboratory. His research interests focus on the development and application of electron microscopy techniques to solve materials problems in nanostructure growth, catalysis, thin-film growth, and materials deformation. He received his PhD degree in materials science and engineering from the University of Virginia. He has held positions as Staff Scientist and Principal Investigator at the National Center for Electron Microscopy at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and as Associate then Full Professor at Purdue University, where he retains an Adjunct appointment. Stach has received several awards, among them the Microscopy Society of America’s Eli F. Burton (Young Scientist) Award, and Purdue University’s Faculty Scholar and Early Career Research Excellence Awards. He is the author of over 150 peer-reviewed publications, and has given over 100 invited presentations at conferences and university, corporate, and national laboratories.

Ting Xu is an assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Department of Chemistry at the University of California–Berkeley. She is interested in generating hierarchically structured functional materials using directed self-assembly. Her current focus is to develop fundamental understanding of the principles governing multi-length scale assemblies in multiple component systems including polymers, nanoparticles, small molecules, and peptides. Xu received her MS degree from Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1999, and her PhD degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 2004. She was a joint postdoctoral fellow of the University of Pennsylvania and the Cold Neutron for Biology and Technology team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology from 2004 to 2006. In 2007, she joined UC-Berkeley. Xu has co-authored over 40 peer-reviewed articles in archival journals, conference proceedings, and book chapters and given over 60 invited talks. She was the recipient of the MRS Graduate Student Silver Award in 2003, 2008 3M Nontenured Faculty Award, 2008 DuPont Young Professor Award, 2009 ONR-Young Investigator Award, 2010 Li Ka Shing Woman Research Award, 2011 Camille-Dreyfus Scholar-Teacher Award, and 2011 ACS Arthur K. Doolittle Award. She was named as one of “Brilliant 10” by Popular Science magazine in 2009.