As part of this Materials Science and Engineering Seminar series, Debra Rolison, head of the Advanced Electrochemical Materials section of the Naval Research Laboratory shares her research on multifunctional nanoarchitectures for catalysis, energy storage and conversion, and sensors.
Debra Rolison
Head of Advanced Electrochemical Materials
Naval Research Laboratory
Debra Rolison heads the Advanced Electrochemical Materials section at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. Her team designs, synthesizes, characterizes, and applies three-dimensionally structured, ultraporous, multifunctional, hold-in-your-hand nanoarchitectures for such rate-critical applications as catalysis, energy storage and conversion, and sensors.
Rolison was a faculty scholar at Florida Atlantic University (1972–1975; B.S. in Chemistry). She received her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1980 after demonstrating the Pt-like character of RuO2 electrodes in nonaqueous electrolytes, helping to establish polymer-modified electrodes, and ensuring frequent pick-up games of killer volleyball. She joined NRL as a staff scientist in 1980.
Rolison is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Women in Science, the Materials Research Society, and the American Chemical Society. Among her major awards, she received the William H. Nichols Medal (2018), the E.O. Hulburt Award (2017; NRL’s top science award and the only woman to receive it in 64 years of bestowal), the Department of the Navy Dr. Dolores M. Etter Top Scientist & Engineer Team Award (2016), the ACS Division of Analytical Chemistry Award in Electrochemistry (2014), the Charles N. Reilley Award of the Society for Electroanalytical Chemistry (2012), the ACS Award in the Chemistry of Materials (2011), and the Hillebrand Prize of the Chemical Society of Washington (2011).
Her editorial advisory board service includes Chemical Reviews, Analytical Chemistry, Langmuir, Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Advanced Energy Materials, and the inaugural boards of Nano Letters, the Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Annual Review in Analytical Chemistry and ACS Applied Energy Materials. Rolison also writes and lectures widely on issues affecting women (and men!) in science, including proposing Title IX assessments of science and engineering departments. She is the author of over 225 articles and holds 39 U.S. patents.