Dr. Diana Farkas is Professor of Materials Science and engineering at Virginia Tech. She completed her doctorate in Applied Science in Metallurgy at the University of Delaware in 1980, and did her postdoctoral work at the Max Planck Institut fur Eisenforschung in Düsseldorf, Germany. She also holds an MS degree in Economics from Virginia Tech.  She has published over 190 papers or book chapters to date. She is a fellow of the American Society for Metals. She has been a Fulbright scholar and has held visiting positions in several Latin American countries as well as in Europe and the US, including Brown University, MIT and Livermore National Laboratory.  Dr. Farkas’ main research interests lie in the structure of defects in alloys and the relationship of these structural characteristics with materials behavior.  She focuses on modeling techniques for the study of material properties using large-scale massively parallel computer simulation. Atomic scale models for mechanical behavior of nano-structured materials is one of her main research interests in recent years.

State Department Profile
Dr. Farkas worked in the Office of Science and Technology Cooperation in the Bureau of Oceans, Environment and Science and with the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. She traveled a number of times to Latin America where she presented lectures on faculty exchange and scientific innovation in industry, as well as promoted collaborative scientific endeavors to help build diplomatic bridges between the U.S. and other countries. Dr. Farkas helped organized and took part in a number of ministerial level bilateral science and technology cooperation meetings between the U.S. and Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Additionally, she worked with the Organization of American States (OAS) on “Engineering for the Americas,” an initiative to improve engineering curricula in Latin American countries. Dr. Farkas participated in the development of the 2010 Strategic plan for the National Nanotechnology Initiative, an effort to coordinate national and international nanotechnology activities, and is involved in the Pan-American Nanotechnology Network. Currently, Dr. Farkas is organizing a U.S.-Brazil Innovation forum to discuss best practices for transferring scientific and technical innovation from the university to industry.