Thompson Receives UA Engineering’s Hackney Leadership Award

The University of Alabama College of Engineering announces Dr. Gregory B. Thompson, professor in the department of metallurgical and materials engineering, as the 2018 T. Morris Hackney Endowed Faculty Leadership award recipient.

The T. Morris Hackney Endowed Faculty Leadership Award honors a faculty member who exemplifies the constant guidance and leadership necessary to make the College of Engineering exceptional. It was created as a tribute to T. Morris Hackney and was made possible by the contributions from John H. Josey and his son, Howard Josey.

Thompson received his award during a recent ceremony at NorthRiver Yacht Club in Tuscaloosa.

Currently, Thompson serves as interim director of UA’s Central Analytical Facility and director of the materials science doctoral program. He joined the University as an assistant professor in 2003, received tenure and a promotion to associate professor in 2008, and became a full professor in 2012. Since joining UA, Thompson has graduated 12 doctoral candidates and nearly 20 master’s thesis students.

He has taught introduction of materials science and engineering, mass and energy balances in materials, manufacturing of materials, characterization methods and techniques and physical metallurgy. Thompson was honored with UA’s Blackmon-Moody Professor of the Year award in 2014 for his leadership in hosting an international atom probe conference on campus.

His research interests include phase transformations, deformation mechanisms and analytical microscopy. He has studied a variety of materials including magnetic thin films, shape memory metal alloys, ultrahigh temperature ceramics and most recently ceramic fiber processing. He has also participated in extended research visits at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, the Air Force Research Laboratory in Ohio and Dynetics in Alabama.

Thompson has received more than $10 million in funding from sources such as the National Science Foundation, NASA, various U.S. Department of Defense agencies, national laboratories and industrial partners. He has authored or co-authored more than 150 journal articles, conference proceedings and extended abstracts along with three book chapters.

Currently, he is the chair for the Phase Transformation Committee of The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS), and he is an active member of the Microscopy Society of America and the International Field Emission Society.

Thompson was given both the TMS Young Leader and the National Science Foundation CAREER awards in 2005. In 2007, he received an honorable mention for the TMS Young Faculty Fellow award, and a year later, he was named the TMS Japanese Institute of Metals Young Leader International Scholar. Thompson was recognized as a Brimcombe Medalist for his research in multi-scale materials characterization from TMS in 2017.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from Brigham Young University in 1996, and went on to earn both his master’s and doctorate in materials science and engineering from Ohio State University in 1998 and 2003, respectively.