Frontiers Science Hero: John Mauro from Frontiers on Vimeo.

Frontiers Science Hero, John Mauro is Frontiers’ Chief Editor of Glass Science. He is also Senior Research Manager in Glass Research at industrial glass company Corning Inc. in Corning, NY, USA. A Fellow of the American Ceramic Society, Mauro is also the co-inventor of several new glass compositions.

“If it’s glass, I’m interested,” says Mauro, in an interview with Frontiers where he shares how his passion for glass initially started. “I first fell in love with glass when I was 6 years old,” he says.

Better understanding the structure and the properties of matter, makes it possible to produce glass with better characteristics for industrial applications. “Glass is well known as one of the most difficult problems in condensed matter physics,” he says. As part of his job, John Mauro builds new glass models, together with colleagues, to understand the material’s behaviour. These models can, in turn, be used to efficiently design new glass compositions.

But John Mauro is not only interested in the scientific aspect of the material. He also loves the artistic side of glass applications. In this interview, he tells us about Corning’s work with artists to help him “learn from art in terms of material engineering.”

A few of John Mauro’s published articles:

Methods for measurement and statistical analysis of the frangibility of strengthened glass

Gordon Scott Fulcher: Renaissance man of glass science

Grand challenges in glass science