Tresa M. Pollock

Class of 2025-26

Professor and holder of the Alcoa Distinguished Chair of Materials
Materials Department
College of Engineering
University of California, Santa Barbara

Tresa Pollock is a scholar of the mechanical and environmental performance of materials in extreme environments. Her advanced design techniques and development of new, highly heat-resistant materials have led to significant improvements in the efficiency and safety of jet aircraft.

She is also the inventor of an in-situ tomography platform called “TriBeam,” which makes it possible to acquire unique information about a material’s chemistry and structure in three dimensions at high resolution.

She received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Pollock is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Société Française de Métallurgie et de Matériaux, ASM International, and The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS). She is a U.S. Department of Defense Vannevar Bush Fellow and a recipient of the Acta Materalia Gold Medal, the TSM/ASM Joint Distinguished Lectureship in Materials and Society Award, and the TMS Morris Cohen Distinguished Achievement Award.

She has authored six books or book chapters and more than 480 peer-reviewed articles, and is the holder of five patents. She has also served as the editor of the “Metallurgical and Materials Transactions” family of journals.

Pollock will collaborate with faculty and students in the College of Engineering.