November 21, 2003

Koch Receives R.J. Reynolds Award

Dr. Koch

Dr. Carl C. Koch, professor of materials science and engineering and associate head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at North Carolina State University, is the nineteenth recipient of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company Award for Excellence in Teaching, Research and Extension. Koch received the award in a ceremony held at 3 p.m. Wednesday, November 19, in 242 Riddick Laboratories at NC State. The award presentation was followed by Koch’s lecture, “Lifelong Learning and Teaching in a Changing Profession.”

The award was established in 1981 within the College of Engineering to honor a member of the Engineering faculty who has demonstrated superiority in several areas of activity that relate to the University's three-fold mission of teaching, research and extension. The annual award is supported by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company through the North Carolina Engineering Foundation Inc. to bring recognition to scientific and educational achievements in fields of engineering. The recipient is given a $25,000 prize distributed over five years.

A highly influential researcher in materials science and engineering, Koch has achieved notable accomplishments in materials science research, education, and extension. He is an internationally respected researcher; an outstanding teacher and departmental leader at North Carolina State University; a national figure as a former chair of the Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society (TMS) Accreditation Committee and as a former editor of one of the world’s foremost materials research journals, Materials Science and Engineering A; and an extension leader in the Materials Research Society and National Science Foundation.

Designated one of the most-cited researchers in materials science by the Institute for Scientific Information, he is a charter member of the Highly Cited Researchers database. One of his most-cited works is a pioneering study published in 1983 in Applied Physics Letters that describes a novel method for processing amorphous materials in a variety of alloy systems. This mechanical alloying system is now widely used, and the paper has been cited internationally more than 700 times. In October 1995 Koch was cited in Science Watch for the third highest number of citations per paper in the world for high-impact articles in materials science for 1990 through1994.

Koch, who joined the College of Engineering faculty in 1983, has been involved in a wide range of activities within the research community at NC State University, including numerous collaborations with researchers in a variety of engineering disciplines. His research interests include nonequilibrium processing, intermetallic compounds, and metastable materials. Collaborative work with other College of Engineering and College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences researchers on the processing, characterization, and superconducting properties of oxide superconductors has provided essential information for the development of these materials. Koch’s studies of the structure and mechanical behavior of nanocrystalline materials are considered seminal in the field and have resulted in numerous international requests for invited conference presentations.

He has achieved the prestigious rank of fellow in several professional societies, including the Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society (TMS), the American Physical Society, ASM International, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and is a member of the Materials Research Society (MRS) as well as Alpha Sigma Mu, Sigma Xi, and Tau Beta Pi technical honor societies. His professional awards include a Department of Energy Metallurgy and Ceramics Award, an I–R 100 Award, an NSF Research Award for Special Creativity, the Alcoa Distinguished Research Award and the North Carolina State University Alumni Distinguished Research Award.

Highly active in professional associations, Koch has been national secretary of the Materials Research Society and a National Science Foundation expert on nanostructured materials. He has served on numerous committees for TMS and MRS. He has followed an interest in accreditation by becoming an evaluator for engineering programs in materials for the Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC) of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) in 1994 and was appointed a member of the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET in 1999. In this capacity he led teams of evaluators on university visits to determine accreditation of their engineering programs. He was appointed an editor of Materials Science and Engineering A from 1997 to February 1, 2003, and he has served as an associate editor for NanoStructured Materials and is presently an editor of Journal of Metastable and Nanocrystalline Materials.

Koch received his bachelor’s degree in metallurgical engineering in 1959, his master’s degree in metallurgy in 1961, and his doctorate in metallurgy in 1964, all from Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University). He was a National Science Foundation Fellow at Birmingham University, England, from 1964 through 1965. In 1965 he joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he began as a staff scientist and advanced to group leader in the superconducting materials then the alloying behavior and design group. He also taught a graduate course in phase transformations at the Oak Ridge campus of the University of Tennessee during this time. Co-holder of three patents, Koch has edited or co-edited six books and authored or co-authored more than 210 scientific papers.

— rudd —

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