Poster #64 - Taylor Sparks

University of Utah, United States

Biography

Dr. Sparks joined the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Utah as an assistant professor in 2013. He is originally from Utah and an alumni of the department he now teaches in. Before graduate school he worked at Ceramatec Inc. He did his MSc in materials at UCSB and his PhD in applied physics at Harvard University in David Clarke’s laboratory and then did a postdoc with Ram Seshadri in the Materials Research Laboratory at UCSB. He is currently the director of the Materials Characterization Lab at the University of Utah and teaches classes on ceramics, materials science, characterization, and technology commercialization. His current research centers on the discovery, synthesis, characterization, and properties of new materials for energy applications. He is a pioneer in the emerging field of materials informatics whereby big data, data mining, and machine learning are leveraged to solve challenges in materials science.