Jeff  Baur

Translating engineering research from basic science to end applications is a complex, collaborative process.

Jeff Baur brings his depth and breadth of knowledge in these areas to help further the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s interdisciplinary research into composite materials.

Baur joins the Beckman Institute as a member of the Autonomous Materials Systems working group, following decades of research ranging from fundamental materials discovery to the development of experimental planes. The institute’s collaborative, multidisciplinary environment was a key draw.

“In a lot of ways, it’s a dream come true,” Baur said. “I have great excitement for joining the AMS Group. I’ve always wanted to work with these people. It’s definitely a stellar group of individuals.”

Recruited through the Illinois System’s Distinguished Faculty Recruitment Program, Baur joins the university as a Founder Professor of Aerospace Engineering at The Grainger College of Engineering.

Baur is a prolific researcher with a decades-long career spanning across government, Additive manufacturing robots from Continuous Composites, Inc. can deposit continuous fiber strands in layers to construct complex and multifunctional composite materials.industry, and academia, 26 years of which were spent in the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. Baur’s research combines the fundamental processing, structural, and property relationships of composite materials with research on additive methods for composite manufacturing. His output includes research into materials for extreme conditions, multifunctional applications, and for shape-changing air vehicles.

“I’ve always had one foot in both worlds,” Baur said. “I’ve been focusing over the last decade or so on multifunctional structures, either adaptive structures — things that change shape — or that have another function, like embedded sensing.”

Baur has also studied nanoparticles, deformable composite materials, and autonomous mechanical-logical structures, research that he plans to continue at UIUC.

“I was focusing on microvascular cooling and reconfigurability in composites and structures, which is how I originally met most of the crew here in the Autonomous Materials Systems Group.”

Designing and validating autonomous aerospace-grade materials is a critical future need.

Bio-inspired design: Crickets, for example, use fine hairs to detect airflow patterns. Artificial hair sensors that measure disturbances in airflow can be manufactured and embedded in composite aerospace materials.“Most of the composite objects we send into the air or send into orbit are made of thermoset polymer resins. There’s an unmet need right now to understand additive manufacturing of these composites and to enable more function by incorporating sensors, self-cooling, self-healing, and sustainability inside aerospace-grade materials,” Baur said.

“Within the AMS Group, I am going to bring an application perspective, but I plan to be doing some very fundamental research that will enable the next generation of concepts. I’m going to be focusing on applying the additive printing process that we’ve been developing in the Air Force to autonomous materials concepts.”

Baur emphasized the collaborative teamwork and problem-solving for which UIUC, and the Beckman Institute, are well known.

“These professors really work well together, and that’s not just a simple thing, that doesn’t happen everywhere. I think Beckman is a big part of bringing these professors together, such that their work all flourishes. It’s a 'dream team' kind of approach.”

Baur obtained his B.A. in physics and chemistry from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1990, and his B.S. in materials science and engineering from the University of Cincinnati in 1992. He obtained his Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1997. He attended the Air War College by correspondence in 2012 and obtained his master’s degree in Lay Pastoral Ministry at The Athenaeum of Ohio in 2019.

His record of publication includes over 90 refereed papers, one book, three book chapters, and five patents. He has taught classes on polymers, physics, and chemistry at M.I.T., the University of Dayton, and the University of Cincinnati, and has served on more than 10 Ph.D. thesis committees.