First finalist for RENEW director position to visit campus

The search for the inaugural director of UB RENEW has moved into the home stretch as the finalists for the position begin to make public visits to campus to meet with UB stakeholders.

The first finalist, Amit Goyal, Corporate Fellow and Distinguished Scientist at UT-Battelle/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is scheduled to visit UB on Aug. 18. He will meet with UB faculty, senior academic and administrative leadership, staff, students and interested members of the broader Western New York community.

Open meetings will be held from 1-2 p.m. for faculty and staff, and from 2:15-3 p.m. for students; both meetings will take place in the Jeannette Martin Room, 567 Capen Hall, North Campus.

The search committee, headed by Bruce McCombe, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Physics, invites interested members of the UB community to attend the meetings, question the candidate and offer feedback. Comments may be sent to ub-renew-search@buffalo.edu.

Those wishing to attend the open meetings are asked to RSVP to ensure available space.

The search for the director of UB RENEW, a comprehensive, multidisciplinary institute dedicated to research and education on globally pressing problems in energy, environment and water, was launched in February. UB RENEW is a signature initiative — and key component — of the Realizing UB 2020 initiative to build on the university’s reputation as a leader in research, scholarship and innovation.

The search attracted a diverse pool of candidates representing a range of experience in academic, professional and leadership roles in a variety of disciplines. After an initial review, the search committee invited some candidates to campus for confidential interviews. That group was narrowed again, and the strongest candidates will make public visits to campus as finalists.

Amit Goyal is the first of the finalists to visit.

He is affiliated with UT-Battelle, the private, not-for-profit company that manages and operates the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) for the U.S. Department of Energy. It was formed in 2000 as a 50-50 limited liability partnership between the University of Tennessee and Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofit research and development organization.

In addition to serving as Corporate Fellow and Distinguished Scientist, Goyal is a Battelle Distinguished Inventor and current chair of the UT-Battelle/ORNL Corporate Fellows Council.

He has more than 25 years’ experience managing diverse, technical projects involving multiple organizations.

His research activities involve large-area, low-cost, high-performance, “flexible electronic” devices, including superconducting devices, photovoltaics, ferroelectrics and multiferroics, as well as 3-D self-assembly of nanodots of complex materials within other complex materials for device applications.

A prolific scholar, Goyal has authored or co-authored more than 350 publications, and delivered 18 plenary talks and more than 160 invited presentations at national and international conferences. He holds 81 patents — 65 U.S. patents and 16 international patents — most of which have been licensed during the past 15 years, and has more than 15 patents pending.

He is a fellow of eight professional societies: the Materials Research Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, the World Innovation Foundation, the American Society of Metals, the Institute of Physics, the American Ceramic Society and the World Technology Network.

Goyal received a BTech in metallurgical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India; a MS in mechanical and aerospace engineering and a PhD in materials science and engineering, both from the University of Rochester. He also received executive business training from the Sloan School of Management at MIT, and earned an executive MBA from Purdue University and an international executive MBA from Tilburg University in the Netherlands.

More information about Goyal, as well as the job posting, is available online.