Subhash Risbud Receives 2025 James I. Mueller Award from The American Ceramic Society

Subhash Risbud, Distinguished Professor emeritus in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Davis, has received the 2025 James I. Mueller Award from the American Ceramic Society, or ACerS. 

The award honors individuals who have provided long-term service to the organization's Engineering Ceramics Division and produced work in the field of engineering ceramics and glasses that have made a significant industrial, international or academic impact. 

In addition to glasses and ceramics, Risbud's work includes investigations into optical and photonic materials such as quantum dot nanostructures grown in glass sheets that may make transmitting signals in telecommunication optics — like those in a high-definition television screen — more effective.

Currently, Risbud and his student researchers are working on using silica quartz sand to make pure silicon and silicon carbide, a promising material for future semiconductor chip substrates, and studying the effects of nuclear radiation on plant seeds and nuclear waste disposal in glasses.  

Earning this award is particularly special to Risbud, due to his close professional relationship with Mueller, the award's namesake and a longtime professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Washington who worked with NASA on developing ceramic materials for use in spacecraft and landing pads. 

Starting in the early 1980s, the two researchers would see each other yearly at the ACerS Engineering Ceramics Division annual meeting in January at Cocoa Beach, Florida. Mueller often offered advice to the younger professor. 

"He was an amazingly gregarious guy, and I learned from him because he was senior to me," said Risbud. "He would give me insights into the balance between teaching and research and how to be a good professor when I taught at Lehigh University and the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign."

Risbud will receive the award at the annual Engineering Ceramics Division meeting this coming January, where he will deliver a plenary lecture entitled "The Enduring Legacy of Mullite, the Quintessential Engineering Ceramic" as part of the award. During his talk, he plans to discuss the development of engineering applications of mullite and newer ultra-high-temperature ceramics. His timely topic will address the increasing demand for such materials in areas like refractory linings, shuttle tiles, deep-space exploration, and electronics and photonics.

Since joining ACerS in 1970, Risbud has earned multiple accolades from the organization, including the Ross Coffin Purdy Award, Outstanding Educator Award and the W. David Kingery Award. He was named an ACerS fellow in 1989. 

Risbud came to UC Davis in 1990 and served as vice chair from 1993-1996 and chair of the then Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. He played a big role in establishing the Department of Materials Science and Engineering Department and became its first chair in 2016. 

His excellent teaching was acknowledged with an Outstanding Teaching Award from the College of Engineering in 2005 and a Distinguished Graduate Teaching Award from the UC Davis Academic Senate in 2008. From 2009 to 2019, Risbud held the Blacutt-Underwood Endowed Professorship in Materials Science.