Gerd Duscher

Gerd Duscher is a Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, within the Tickle College of Engineering. He specializes in interface science, atomic resolution microscopy, and computational materials modeling. His research focuses on understanding atomic structures at interfaces and their impact on macroscopic properties, utilizing advanced transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and density functional theory (DFT) simulations.

Education:

• PhD in Materials Science and Engineering, University of Stuttgart (1996)
• Master's (Diplom) in Physics, University of Regensburg (1990)

Research Interests: Includes electrical activity at interfaces, atomic structure calculations, Z-contrast imaging, electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS), and the application of machine learning in materials characterization. His work spans semiconductor interfaces, nanomaterial synthesis, and defect engineering.

Awards:

• 2011 Research Fellow Award (UT College of Engineering)
• 2008 George H. Bessis Outstanding Undergraduate Advisor Award (NCSU)
• 2004 Nano Technology Industrial Impact Award

Grants & Labs: Director of the NSF IUCRC Center for Silicon Wafer Engineering and Defect Science (2006). Active in the Joint Institute of Advanced Materials & Manufacturing and leads TEM facilities at UT. Develops open-source tools like pyTEMlib for TEM data analysis and Jupyter notebooks for teaching computational materials science.