UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State professor John Mauro, an internationally recognized materials expert and co-inventor of LionGlass, has been elected an academician by the World Academy of Ceramics (WAC).
Professional members of WAC, known as academicians, are individuals who have made an international noteworthy contribution to the advancement of ceramics, according to WAC. The appointment as an academician is honorary and rewards the personal merits in the field.
Mauro, the Dorothy Pate Enright Professor and associate head for graduate education in Penn State's Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has spent the past 25 years developing new physical understanding of glassy systems and applying that understanding toward the design of novel glass chemistries, most famously Corning Gorilla Glass and now Penn State’s own LionGlass.
LionGlass is a new formulation of glass that’s more scratch resistant and created using a fraction of the energy versus conventional glass. LionGlass has the potential to replace glass used in wide ranges of materials, from windows to wine bottles. It has half the carbon footprint of conventional glass. LionGlass secured its first corporate partner in 2024.
“I feel very grateful to be recognized by my colleagues in the World Academy of Ceramics and hope that my efforts in glass research and education can help inspire the next generation of young scientists and engineers,” Mauro said.
Mauro joined the faculty at Penn State in 2017 and is currently a world-recognized expert in fundamental and applied glass science, statistical mechanics, computational and condensed matter physics, thermodynamics and kinetics, and the topology of disordered networks. He is the author of more than 380 peer-reviewed publications and is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society. He is co-author of "Fundamentals of Inorganic Glasses," 3rd edition (Elsevier, 2019), the definitive textbook on glass science and technology, and author of the recently published textbook, "Materials Kinetics: Transport and Rate Phenomena" (Elsevier, 2021). He is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors with 83 granted U.S. patents. He also is a fellow of the American Ceramic Society and the Society of Glass Technology. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and now the World Academy of Ceramics.
Mauro joined Corning Inc. in 1999 and served in multiple roles there, including senior research manager of the Glass Research department. He is the inventor or co-inventor of several new glass compositions for Corning, including Corning Gorilla Glass products.
WAC was founded in 1987. It constitutes a center for the international community directed toward promoting progress in the field of ceramics and fostering a better understanding of the social impact and cultural interactions of ceramics science, technology, history and art. It is a voluntary, nonprofit organization of collective and individual supporting members concerned with the welfare of the ceramics sector.