People

Jonathan E. Spanier received BA degrees in physics and music from Drew University in Madison, NJ, and the PhD with Distinction from Columbia University in 2001 in applied physics with Professor Irving P. Herman. He completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in physical chemistry at Harvard University with Professor Hongkun Park prior to joining the Drexel faculty in 2003. He is presently Professor and Head of Mechanical Engineering & Mechanics (MEM) and Professor of Materials Science & Engineering (MSE), and he holds affiliated faculty appointments in the Department of Physics and the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Drexel University. He served as an associate dean in the College of Engineering, directed the university’s Centralized Research Facilities (2011–2017), and led development of the College’s 2013–2018 Strategic Plan. He served as Interim Associate Head for MSE (2006–2008) and Interim Head for MEM (2019–2020). Prior to completing his PhD, he held research and technical staff positions at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in physical acoustics and in the semiconductor device industry, and he was a visiting lecturer at Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, in 2001.

Professor Spanier investigates the structure and physical, electronic, and dielectric properties of emergent solid state electronic materials. He probes the interactions of light with matter, including Raman scattering revealing phase stability, the effects of symmetry and nanoscale phenomena on photovoltaic energy conversion, and electronic excitations and radiofrequency microwave resonant phenomena. Materials systems under study include complex oxide bulk crystals and thin films, and their surfaces. He and his group also study the solid phase epitaxy enabling formation of high-quality oxide perovskite films via atomic layer deposition. Alumnae/i of his group hold positions in federal service and industry, and nine of his former student and postdoctoral advisees currently hold tenured or tenure-track academic positions in STEM fields.

Professor Spanier received the US Army Research Office (ARO) Young Investigator Award in 2004, the Nano-Bio Interface Innovation Award in 2005, the Outstanding Research Award in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at Drexel for 2007, and the 2014 College of Engineering Excellence in Research Award for his discovery of new sustainable energy conversion materials for light harvesting technologies. In 2007, he was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) at the White House. He was an Office of Naval Research Summer Faculty Fellow in 2010, and received the Distinguished Service Award from the Louis R. Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation in 2013, and was named a Louis and Bessie Stein Family Fellow in 2013. In 2014, he was awarded a Japan Trust International Research Cooperation Fellowship from the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology to work as a visiting scientist at Fujitsu Laboratories, Ltd. He participated by invitation in the National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering at UC Irvine in 2014. In 2016, he was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, Division of Materials Physics.

Spanier College Faculty page

• Brillouin spectroscopy
• Raman spectroscopy
• Automation of spectroscopic techniques  

• Magneto-electric/magneto-elastic/electro-strictive/ferro-elastic coupling in ferromagnetic/ferroelectric materials by inelastic light scattering (Brillouin and Raman)
• Phase transition mechanism
• Lattice dynamics

• Complex oxide heterostructure and superlattice thin films grown by PLD and MBE, interface engineering
• Ferroelectrics, antiferroelectrics and multiferroics, negative capacitance, magnetoelectric coupling
• Spintronics, Skyrmions, anomalous hall effects, topologic hall effects