C. Jeffrey Brinker attended Rutgers University where he received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in ceramic science and engineering.  He is jointly employed at Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, where he is one of two Laboratory Fellows and at the University of New Mexico, where he is Distinguished and Regent’s Professor of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering with co-appointments in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology and the UNM Cancer Center.  He is also Co-Director of the Center for Micro-Engineered Materials.   Brinker has been recognized nationally and internationally for his pioneering work in sol-gel processing - the formation of ceramic materials from molecular precursors. Notably, he combined sol-gel processing with molecular self-assembly in a process called Evaporation-Induced Self-Assembly that enables the efficient formation of porous and composite nanostructures from homogeneous sols through simple evaporative procedures. Recently, he has pioneered a new means of integrating living cells within nanostructures that provides a platform to study biology at the individual cell level and a nanoparticle supported lipid bilayer construct for targeted drug delivery.

His awards include three R&D100 Awards, the American Chemical Society’s Ralph K. Iler Award in the Chemistry of Colloidal Materials, five Department of Energy Basic Energy Sciences Awards, the Collegiate Inventors Award, the DOE Ernest O. Lawrence Memorial Award in Materials Science, the Materials Research Society Medal, and the American Ceramic Society’s Edward R. Orton, Jr. Memorial Award (2008) and Robert B. Sosman Award (2010). In 2002 Brinker was elected into the National Academy of Engineering and he was named a Materials Research Society Fellow in 2009.