Metallurgical engineering alum Yurek named to National Academy of Engineering
Yurek, who earned a Ph.D. in metallurgical engineering from Ohio State in 1973, is founder, chairman, president and CEO of American Superconductor Corp.(AMSC) in Devens, Mass. Under hisleadership, AMSC has become the world market and technology leader in high temperature superconductor products and the leading vendor of advanced power,electronics-based grid stabilization solutions. AMSC markets its products to the electric power, industrial processing, transportation, medical and defense industries.
From 1976 to 1988, Yurek was on the materials science and engineering faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he taught and conductedresearch that focused onthe thermodynamics and rapid solidification processing of metals and ceramics and the development ofcorrosion-resistant materials—work that led to the invention of methods for manufacturing high-temperature superconductor wire.
In 1987, Yurek founded ASMC with three fellow MIT professors. He took the company public in 1991 and has raised more than $600 million in capital from venture capitalists, corporate partners, government contracts and private and public equity offerings to meet the company’s growth needs. Prior to founding the company, Yurek was a research scientist in the Metals and Ceramics Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where his research provided the foundation for the government code on operating power levels in pressurized water nuclear reactors.
He has received numerous awards including being made a Fellow of Britain’s Institute of Electrical Engineers, earning the Distinguished Alumnus Award of the College of Engineering at Ohio State, being the first non-Japanese recipient of the Award of Merit from the Japanese Science and Technology Agency as well as receiving the MacFarland Award for his lifetime achievements in metallurgy.
A native of Pennsylavania, Yurek earned his B.S. and M.S in metallurgy from Penn State University and has authored more than 60 publications and holds nine U.S. patents. To read more about Yurek’s successes as well as his memories of his time at Ohio State, visit http://go.osu.edu/yurek.
