Dr. Sparks is a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Utah and recently completed a sabbatical at the University of Liverpool with support from the Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellow program. He holds a BS in MSE from the UofU, MS in Materials from UCSB, and PhD in Applied Physics from Harvard University. He was a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and a speaker for TEDxSaltLakeCity. He is active in MRS, TMS, and ACERS societies. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief for the Integrating Materials and Manufacturing Innovation and has served as an Associate Editor for Data in Brief and Computational Materials Science. When he’s not in the lab you can find him running his podcast “Materialism,” creating materials educational content for his YouTube channel, or canyoneering with his 4 kids in southern Utah.