Tabbetha A. Dobbins (’02 EMS) assistant professor with a joint appointment in physics at Louisiana Tech University and Grambling State University was one of 10 alumni to receive the 2007 Penn State Alumni Association Alumni Achievement Award. This award recognizes alumni who are 35 years of age and younger for their extraordinary professional accomplishments.
After receiving her doctorate from Penn State in 2002, Dobbins was awarded the prestigious National Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellowship to do research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Dobbins’ dissertation focused on how high-temperature thermal spray conditions affected the quality of thermal barrier coatings—a critical component to the performance of commercial jet engines. She continues to do cutting-edge research in applying synchrotron x-ray analysis to modern engineering problems in carbon nanotubes, the hydrogen fuel economy, and polymer self-assembly. She already has an excellent record of publication in the top journals for materials research, which includes 13 scholarly publications.
Dobbins also excels in teaching and outreach. In her position, she has mentored students in both graduate and undergraduate research projects and promoted the students’ professional research. She works diligently to engage Louisiana Tech and Grambling State universities in joint research with Penn State in the area of synchrotron X-ray studies. One focus of this collaboration is on introducing women and minority students to state-of-the-art instrumentation and to the excitement of materials research. Students from these two institutions travel to Penn State to conduct research expanding the capabilities and relationships of all three universities, while at the same time, attracting and recruiting students to Penn State’s graduate science programs.
Dobbins is a member of the Louisiana Science Teacher’s Association and serves on the Louisiana State University Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices User Participation Committee. She lives in Ruston, La.
