Arthur T. Motta

Dr. Arthur Motta is the Chair of the Nuclear Engineering program and a Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering. He holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering and an M.Sc. in Nuclear Engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Motta joined the Penn State faculty in 1992. Before coming to Penn State, he worked as a research associate for the CEA at the Centre for Nuclear Studies in Grenoble, France, for two years and as a post-doctoral fellow for AECL at Chalk River Laboratories in Canada.
Dr. Motta's accomplishments include several visiting professorships, including at the Chalk River Laboratories in Canada and the Materials Department of the Institute for Nuclear and Energy Research at the University of Sao Paolo, Brazil. He has also supervised several award-winning master's theses at Penn State and earned the Penn State Engineering Society Outstanding Advising Award in 2001. Dr. Motta was appointed Chair of the Nuclear Engineering program in 2010.
For the last 15 years, Dr. Motta has worked in the area of radiation damage and environmental degradation to materials with specific emphasis in Zr alloys. His research interests include the behavior of nuclear reactor materials under irradiation, including structural components and fuel cladding; materials under irradiation; phase transformations; corrosion; mechanical behavior of materials; materials characterization using transmission electron microscopy, positron annihilation spectroscopy, synchrotron radiation; and Zr alloys, intermetallic compounds and steels.