Robert J. Lad

Prof. Lad has been at the University of Maine since 1988, and was a member of the Frontier Institute For Research in Sensor Technologies (FIRST), an interdisciplinary research center at UMaine that focuses on surfaces, interfaces, thin films, micro-devices, and nanotechnology.  He has been the PI or Co-PI on 42 grants totaling over $40 million from agencies including NSF, ONR, DARPA, DOE, NASA, AFOSR, AFRL, ARO, and several industries, to support his research programs.  He and his students have authored 115 journal publications and given over 200 presentations at scientific meetings. He has advised individual research projects for 7 postdocs, 15 Ph.D., 6 M.S., and 63 undergraduate students.

His laboratory contains a versatile Thin Film Synthesis, Processing & Characterization facility that is equipped with instrumentation including several different thin film deposition techniques (e-beam, sputtering, ALD, GLAD,  plasma-assisted growth), x-ray and uv photoelectron spectroscopies, electron and x-ray diffraction, scanned probe microscopies, high temperature furnaces, and a controlled-atmosphere conductivity/Hall effect apparatus.

Prof. Lad obtained a B.S. in Materials Engineering from Northwestern University in 1980, and Ph.D. in Materials Science from Cornell University in 1986 working on high temperature gaseous corrosion of metallic alloys.  Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Maine, he was a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Applied Physics at Yale University, where he studied the surface science of metal oxides and performed photoemission studies of the electronic structure of oxide materials at the National Synchrotron Light Source. He was the Director of UMaine’s Laboratory for Surface Science & Technology (now known as FIRST) from 1996-2014, and he received the UMaine Presidential Research and Creative Achievement Award in 2004, a UMaine System Trustee Professorship in 2006, and the Distinguished Maine Professor Award in 2013.