William Soffa

About

Professor Soffa’s research interests are in the areas of phase transformations, magnetic materials and crystal plasticity. He has been particularly interested in using electron microscopy to study clustering and ordering in solid solutions and in the synergistics of these processes in precipitation phenomena. In addition, he has been studying the mechanisms of coercivity in permanent magnet materials and the relationship between microstructure and properties in hard ferromagnets. Most recently, he has directed his attention to ferromagnetic L10 intermetallic phases including nanophase hard magnets and thin films.

Following his postdoctoral work at Oxford he joined the faculty in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh in 1968 where he taught and did research for over thirty years. He was Department Chair at Pitt from 1995-2000. He was a Visiting Humboldt Scholar at the Institut fur Metallphysik at  the University of Goettingen in 1979 and a Visiting Professor in the Department Materials Science at Berkeley (U of Cal) in 1987. While at Pitt he was also Director of the Engineering Physics Program. In 2000- 2001 Professor Soffa was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Vienna and at the  Department of Applied Physics/ ETH-Zurich. In 2004 he joined the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Virginia becoming Professor Emeritus in 2012.

Professor Soffa has published over 100 papers in archival journals and refereed conference proceedings in the areas of phase transformations, magnetic materials and materials physics.