UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — John Mauro, the interim John Leone Dean in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State, was selected to receive the 2026 W. David Kingery Award from the American Ceramic Society (ACerS). He will be recognized on Monday, Oct. 5, at the ACerS Honors and Awards Banquet, which will be held during the society’s 128th Annual Meeting (MS&T26) in Pittsburgh.
The Kingery Award, one of the highest honors bestowed in the ceramics community, recognizes “distinguished lifelong achievements involving multidisciplinary and global contributions to ceramic technology, science, education and art.” One award is given each year, and winners receive a certificate, glass commemorative piece and a $5,000 honorarium.
“The Kingery Award is especially meaningful to me because, as a student at Alfred University, I spent many years studying from his classic textbook, 'Introduction to Ceramics,'” Mauro said. “I also have a direct academic connection to Kingery. My adviser, Arun Varshneya, earned his Ph.D. under Alfred R. Cooper at Case Institute of Technology, and Cooper earned his Ph.D. under Kingery at [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)]. In that sense, Kingery is my academic great-grandfather, making this honor particularly special.”
Mauro, who joined the Penn State faculty in 2017, is an internationally recognized materials and glass science expert and co-inventor of LionGlass. Prior to joining Penn State, Mauro worked for 18 years as an industrial research scientist at Corning Incorporated, where he was co-inventor of three iterations of Corning Gorilla Glass, a thin, durable, touch sensitive cover glass that has been used in billions of cellphones, tablets and touch-screen devices worldwide.
Mauro was appointed head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in 2025 and, prior to that, served as chair of the Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Materials Science and Engineering and associate head for graduate education in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences’ Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
Mauro is a fellow of the American Ceramic Society, the Society of Glass Technology and the National Academy of Inventors. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering and an elected academician in the World Academy of Ceramics. He also serves as editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society. He received the EMS Paul F. Robertson Award for Research Breakthrough of the Year in 2020 for his pioneering work in decoding the “glass genome” — the code to design new functional glasses.
Mauro earned a bachelor of science in glass engineering science and a bachelor of arts in computer science, both in 2001, and a doctorate in glass science in 2006, all from Alfred University.
About W. David Kingery
W. David Kingery (1926–2000) was a pioneering American materials scientist renowned for transforming ceramics from a craft-based practice into a rigorous scientific discipline. Educated at MIT, where he later became a professor, Kingery laid the theoretical foundation for the field of physical ceramics by applying principles of solid-state physics and crystallography. He developed quantitative models for ceramic properties and advanced processing techniques like sintering. He was honored with numerous awards, including the Kyoto Prize in 1999, recognizing him as the “father of modern ceramics.