Georgia Tech Assistant Professor Josh Kacher has been selected to receive the 2018 ASM Bradley Stoughton Award for Young Teachers. The ASM International Board of Trustees recently made the announcement.

Kacher’s citation reads: “For his passion and joy for teaching, and his sustained record of teaching and research excellence, and for his enthusiasm, adaptability, and commitment to mentoring students in research and exploratory contexts.”

Kacher joined Georgia Tech’s Materials Science and Engineering department as an assistant professor in fall of 2015.

The Bradley Stoughton Award for Young Teachers was established in 1952 in memory of an outstanding teacher of metallurgy and Dean of Engineering who was President of ASM in 1942, to encourage young teachers of materials science, engineering, design and processing by rewarding them for their ability to impart knowledge and enthusiasm to students.  The award carries a certificate and an honorarium of $3,000. There is only one individual selected each year.

The award presentation will be made at the ASM Awards Dinner scheduled to take place during the Materials Science & Technology 2018 Conference and Exhibition (MS&T’18), Oct. 14-17 in Columbus, Ohio. 

Prior to Kacher’s appointment at Georgia Tech, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. There, he worked in collaboration with General Motors to understand the Portevin-le Chatelier effect in Al-Mg and with the navy to develop novel rhenium-replacement alloys. His research approach centered on applying in situ TEM deformation to understand the influence of local chemistry on the behavior of defects such as dislocations and twins. This was coupled with mesoscale characterization of the defect state using EBSD for multiscale characterization of the deformation processes.

His Ph.D. and master’s work similarly focused on applying multiscale electron microscopy techniques to understanding defect behavior in a variety of systems such as ion-irradiated stainless steels, materials at elevated temperatures, and Mg alloys for light-weight alloy development.