Anthony Cheetham
ICMR Director
University of California at Santa Barbara

Tony Cheetham obtained his D. Phil. at the University of Oxford in 1971 and was a member of the Chemistry faculty at Oxford from 1974-91. In 1991 he moved to the University of California at Santa Barbara to become Professor in the Materials and Chemistry Departments, and, in 1992, Director of the Materials Research Laboratory. After twelve years as director, Tony Cheetham stepped down in September 2004 in order to establish the International Center for Materials Research and to focus his energies on this new project. The center was officially launched in August 2004 and aims to promote global excellence in materials science and engineering through a series of research and educational programs. He has a long-standing interest in the development of tools for the structural elucidation of materials, including diffraction techniques employing synchrotron X-rays and neutrons, as well as solid state NMR and computer simulation methods. In the context of inorganic materials, his primary interests are in the synthesis and properties of novel open-framework systems, especially phosphates, and the study of transition metal oxides. Honors include election to a Fellowship of the Royal Society, London (1994), a Chaire Internationale de Recherche, Blaise Pascal, Paris (1997-9), Associate Fellowship of the Third World Academy of Sciences (1999), Distinguished Fellow at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (1999), Elected Honorary Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences (2001), and most recently, recipient of the Somiya Award of the IUMRS (2004 with CNR Rao).