Himanshu Jain Appointed as an Expert Within the NSF Division of Graduate Education, Directorate of STEM Education (EDU)

During Jain’s tenure, I-FMD has grown to include nearly 70 affiliated Lehigh faculty members, with interdisciplinary teams developing multi-PI proposals, working on numerous projects, and securing grant funding, including a $6 million grant from the NSF’s Accelerating Research Translation (ART) Program. I-FMD hosts annual workshops to spark collaborations with external academic, industry, and government partners and educate researchers on topics such as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and electron microscopy.

“I am thankful to the colleagues who have helped in developing I-FMD from scratch into an engine for research, development, and innovation,” says Jain. “It has been very gratifying to lead its growth, and I am happy to leave it in such capable hands.”

Jain currently leads the university’s Pasteur Partners PhD (P3) Program, a unique and active partnership with industry including private corporations, national labs, and defense and healthcare organizations that hire PhDs and deliver cutting-edge STEM applications across industry sectors. 

After joining the engineering faculty in 1985, Jain spent eleven years at the helm of the National Science Foundation’s International Materials Institute for New Functionality in Glass and built a network of glass researchers in 36 countries. He is the author of 12 patents and more than 400 research publications, and he is editor or author of 10 books or special journal issues on glass science and technology. His contributions have been recognized through numerous prestigious awards, including, most recently, the N.F Mott Award from the Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids. He is also a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society.

As a result of the innovative P3 model of doctoral training that he developed together with Lehigh professors Anand Jagota and Volkmar Dierolf, Jain has been appointed as an Expert within the Division of Graduate Education, Directorate of STEM Education (EDU) at NSF. He will be primarily contributing to the development of new joint funding programs through a collaboration with the Technology Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) Directorate to train a diverse STEM graduate workforce that is well prepared for employment in industry, government, and nonprofit organizations as well as academia. While serving in this capacity, Jain will continue to support his full-time position at Lehigh.