Rate My Professor Kyle Brinkman

Kyle Brinkman serves as Professor and Chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Clemson University within the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences. A Clemson alumnus, he earned his Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering in 1998 and Master of Science in Materials Science and Engineering in 2000 from Clemson University, followed by a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2004. Following his doctorate, Brinkman conducted postdoctoral research as a fellow at the Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Institute in Japan from 2005 to 2007 under a sponsorship from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. He then served as Principal Engineer in the Science and Technology Directorate at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River National Laboratory from 2007 to 2014. Joining Clemson as an Associate Professor in 2014, he was promoted to Professor and appointed Department Chair effective March 1, 2019. He leads a department with 21 faculty, over 220 undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, and research staff, supported by an annual teaching and research budget exceeding $11 million.

Brinkman’s research focuses on energy materials, including ionic conductors for solid oxide fuel cells and solid-state batteries, nuclear materials, experimental thermodynamics of materials, ceramics, fuel cells, and solid-state batteries. As Principal Investigator of the Energy Materials Research Laboratory, he has authored or co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed technical publications and government reports and holds three patents. Key publications include “Enhancing grain boundary ionic conductivity in mixed ionic electronic conductors” (Nature Communications, 2015), “The effect of cesium content on the thermodynamic stability and chemical durability of (Ba, Cs)1.33(Al,Ti)8O16 hollandite” (Journal of the American Ceramic Society, 2020), and “Scalable, durable, and high-performance protonic ceramic fuel cell stacks manufactured by direct laser reactive additive manufacturing” (Device, 2025). He has secured more than $21 million in external funding. Brinkman serves as editor for the Journal of Materials Science (Springer Nature), co-director of Clemson’s Nuclear Environmental Engineering Sciences and Radioactive Waste Management Center, and National Energy Technology Laboratory ORISE Faculty Fellow. His achievements include Fellow of the American Ceramic Society (2020), Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2023), Academician of the World Academy of Ceramics (2023), Navrotsky Award for Experimental Thermodynamics of Solids (2023), Brimacombe Medalist Award from The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (2020), Karl Schwartzwalder-Professional Achievement in Ceramic Engineering Award (2015), Clemson Outstanding Young Alumni Award (2015), and Murray Stokely Prize for Excellence in Teaching (2018).