Professor Hmelo’s research has taken him around the world and to the very edge of Space, stories he enjoys recounting with his students. Throughout his career he has worked entirely in shared laboratory environments, designing and managing user facilities at Brookhaven National Laboratory and Vanderbilt University, while training hundreds of customers of these facilities. Professor Hmelo has been closely associated with the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and served as Chair of the User Executive Committee (2013). He has worked at several NASA centers in support of three fluid physics experiments on multi-investigator platforms aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia (1992, 1995, 1997) for the Vanderbilt Center for Microgravity Research and Applications, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Professor Hmelo has recently retired as Associate Director of the Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at the conclusion of a long career of teaching, research and service to VINSE and Vanderbilt University.

You can read his official biography on the occasion of his 25 years of service to Vanderbilt here and more about him in general here or visit his LinkedIn page.