Dr. Xiaohong Gu

Dr. Xiaohong Gu is a materials research engineer in the Polymeric Materials Group of the Materials and Structural Systems Division (MSSD) of the Engineering Laboratory (EL) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Dr. Gu joined the Polymeric Materials Group of the Materials and Construction Division as a guest researcher in 1998. From 1998 to 2001, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow from Howard University, which was financially supported by U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. She was a Research Associate from University of Missouri, Kansas City, working at NIST from 2001 to 2010. Currently Dr. Gu is a contractor and a project leader in Polymeric Materials Group. She is responsible for planning and implementing research on predicting the service life of filled and unfilled nanostructured polymeric materials using reliability-based methodology. Dr. Gu’s main research interests and expertise are in service life prediction, multiple-scale physical and chemical characterization, polymer degradation mechanism, and particle-polymer interfacial phenomena. She is involved in the development of characterization methods for determining microstructure-property relationship in polymers and coatings and has successfully related the chemical and sub-microstructure changes to macroscopic appearance changes. Her outstanding work on measuring nanoscale chemical properties using AFM with chemically-functionalized tips and humidity chamber has opened an area for imaging nanoscale chemical heterogeneity in polymeric materials.

Prior to joining NIST, Dr. Gu was a Associate professor at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics from 1994 to 1997 and a visiting scholar in University of Georgia from 1997 to 1998. Her research activities included spectroscopic studies of the curing mechanism of polymeric coatings, and modification and characterization of coating/metal interphase.

Dr. Gu was the recipient of the "Science and Technology Development" first prize awards in 1993 and 1999 given by the Jiangsu Science and Technology Society, China for her pioneering research on molecular design and microstructure studies of the interface of polymeric composites using spectroscopic techniques. In 2003, she received the "Best Poster Award" sponsored by Michelin Research and Development Corp. from the Adhesion Society for her contributions to imaging chemical heterogeneity in polymers with AFM. In 2006, she received the John A. Gordon Best Paper Award from Federation of Societies for Coating Technology. She was the recipient of "BFRL Distinguished Associate Award" for her distinguished contributions to the development of nanoscale characterization techniques for prediction the service life and durability of polymeric material systems. She is the author or co-author of one patent and over 80 technical publications.