Michael Falk

About

Michael Falk is a professor of materials science and engineering, mechanical engineering, and physics at Johns Hopkins University. He serves as the vice dean for undergraduate education within the Whiting School of Engineering, a position he has held since July 2017. Falk’s research focuses on utilizing computer simulation on the atomic scale to understand what happens when materials are pushed out of equilibrium by processes such as bending, breaking, charging, and undergoing frictional sliding. Since returning to Johns Hopkins, his funded projects have expanded to include educational research on how engineering students best learn computing and two NSF-funded partnerships with Baltimore City Schools to increase engagement of students, teachers, and communities in STEM learning. Falk has also been a strong advocate for diversity, particularly creating a welcoming climate for LGBTQ people within the university and the engineering and physics professions.

Research topics

• Composite material
• Chemical physics
• Crystallography
• Materials science
• Thermodynamics

Selected publications

• Predicting plasticity in disordered solids from structural indicators

  Physical Review Materials · 2020 · 209 citations

  Amorphous solids lack long-range order. Therefore identifying structural defects---akin to dislocations in crystalline solids---that carry plastic flow in these systems remains a daunting challenge. By comparing many different structural indicators in computational models of glasses, under a variety of conditions we carefully assess which of these indicators are able to robustly identify the structural defects responsible for plastic flow in amorphous solids. We further demonstrate that the dens…

  DOI

• <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:mi>LGBT</mml:mi><mml:mo>+</mml:mo></mml:mrow></mml:math>physicists: Harassment, persistence, and uneven support

  Physical Review Physics Education Research · 2022-03-28 · 33 citations

  articleOpen access

  Diversity and inclusion in the field of physics has been an important area of research in the last two decades. However, such work has scarcely looked at the concerns and barriers faced by LGBT physicists, despite numerous indications they face discrimination in wider society. This article presents the first study looking at the climate experiences and persistence of LGBT physicists through an online survey (N 324) focused on intragroup differences within the LGBT community. The results indicate…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Deformation induced solute segregation and G.P. zone formation in Mg-Al and Mg-Zn binary alloys

  Scripta Materialia · 2022-07-23 · 26 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Diffuse electron scattering reveals kinetic frustration as origin of order in CoCrNi medium entropy alloy

  Acta Materialia · 2024-02-11 · 19 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Topological characterization of rearrangements in amorphous solids

  Physical review. E · 2024-05-29 · 17 citations

  articleSenior author

  In amorphous materials, plasticity is localized and occurs as shear transformations. It was recently shown by Wu et al. that these shear transformations can be predicted by applying topological defect concepts developed for liquid crystals to an analysis of vibrational eigenmodes [Z. W. Wu et al., Nat. Commun. 14, 2955 (2023)10.1038/s41467-023-38547-w]. This study relates the -1 topological defects to the displacement fields expected of an Eshelby inclusion, which are characterized by an orienta…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• STEM Achievement in Baltimore Elementary Schools (SABES)

  NSF · $7.4M · 2012–2018

• Baltimore Online Algebra for High School Students in Technology

  NSF · $2.4M · 2020–2026

• Fundamental Simulation Studies of Mixing at Sliding Interfaces

  NSF · $250k · 2005–2009

Frequent coauthors

• Timothy P. Weihs

  Johns Hopkins University

  46 shared

• Sylvain Patinet

  37 shared

• Suhas Eswarappa Prameela

  American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

  36 shared

• Alejandra J. Magana

  Bridge University

  28 shared

• Camilo Vieira

  Universidad del Norte

  25 shared

• Dwight J. Rouse

  Island Institute

  24 shared

• Peng Yi

  Chongqing Jiaotong University

  23 shared

• Michael Reese

  Chicago Council on Global Affairs

  21 shared

Education

• PhD, Physics

  University of California Santa Barbara

  1998

• MSE, Computer Science

  Johns Hopkins University

  1991

• BA, Physics

  Johns Hopkins University

  1990

Awards & honors

• ARPA-E CHADWICK Grant

Similar researchers at Johns Hopkins University

• Howard Katzh-92
• Hai-Quan Maoh-86
• Kalina Hristovah-52