Katherine T. Faber currently holds the position of Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University. Her research interests include fracture of brittle materials, thermal shock, reliability, and cultural heritage science. She has published more than 140 papers and edited one book on fracture and toughening mechanisms in ceramics, glasses, electronic materials, cement-based materials, coatings, and ceramic-matrix composites. Educated at Alfred University with a B.S. in Ceramic Engineering (1975), she earned a M.S. in Ceramic Science at the Pennsylvania State University (1978) and a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from to the University of California, Berkeley (1982). She has held the positions of Invited Summer Employee at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1975, 76) and Development Associate at the Carborundum Company (1978-79) and Visiting Professor of Materials at the University of California, Santa Barbara (Winter 1996). Prior to joining the faculty at Northwestern in 1988, she was Assistant and Associate Professor of Ceramic Engineering at the Ohio State University (1982-87). Her administrative positions have included Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research in the McCormick School (1992-97) and Chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (1998-2003). Among Professor Faber’s awards are the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Young Investigator Award, Fellow of the American Ceramic Society and of ASM International, the Charles E. MacQuigg Award for Outstanding Teaching at Ohio State, the Society of Women Engineers Distinguished Educator Award, and the YWCA Achievement Award for Education. She is an ISI Highly Cited Author in Materials, and in 2007, completed a term as President of the American Ceramic Society.
