Peter J. Blau is a Distinguished Research and Development Staff Member, and Leader of the Tribology Research User Center in the Materials Science and Technology Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Metallurgy and Materials Science from Lehigh University, and a Ph.D. in Metallurgical Engineering from The Ohio State University. His research career began with studies of impact-melted meteorites, and led to an appointment as a co-investigator for the NASA Apollo Lunar Sample Examination Program (ALSEP) in the early 1970s. With more than 30 years of research, development, and project management experience in materials engineering and tribology, he has held positions at the Air Force Materials Laboratory, the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST), the Office of Naval Research, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Peter is a past chairman of ASTM’s Committee G-2 on Wear and Erosion, was chairman of the ASM Handbook Volume 18 on “Friction, Lubrication, and Wear Technology,” and is the author of three monographs and over 150 articles on tribology, hardness, and physical metallurgy. His most recent book is Friction Science and Technology – From concepts to applications (2008). In addition to authoring, he has served on the editorial advisory boards of several journals, including Tribology International, Tribotest, Tribology Transactions, and Wear, and was the editor for full-length papers for the 2003 and 2005 International Conferences on Wear of Materials (WOM).
After chairing WOM 1997, Peter presented an invited lecture at the First World Tribology Congress in London that same year. Other invited lectures include two NATO Advanced Studies Institutes on friction (Germany 1991, Hungary 2000), and the 2nd International Symposium on Tribo-Corrosion (Austria 2009). In addition, he’s spoken at technical society dinner meetings, university seminars, short courses, and Gordon Research Conferences on Tribology. Over the years, he has also done private consulting in automotive, aerospace, biomedical, and other industrial sectors, and has served on external evaluation panels for international research projects, the U.S. National Science Foundation, and universities.
Peter is a Fellow of ASM International, ASTM International, and the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE). His recent work has involved developing laboratory simulations for evaluating new materials and surface treatments for tribological applications, and he continues to work actively in the areas of technical terminology and standards development in ASTM Committee G2. As an avocation, he enjoys writing limericks and poems with tribological themes, and was the luncheon speaker at WOM 2009, when the first Blau Best Poster Award was given.
Peter M. Lee is a Staff Engineer and the Chief Tribologist at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio Texas. He established the Tribology Research and Evaluations Group in 2011 following his move to the US from the University of Leeds, where he was a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow.
Peter Filip, PhD, DSc
Mark Gee is an NPL Fellow in the Materials Division at the National Physical Laboratory. Recently he was awarded the status of visiting Professor at the University of Southampton and is a core member of the national Centre for Advanced Tribology and Southampton. He leads projects that are concerned with the development of an improved infrastructure for friction and wear testing in the UK. Particular research interests are the mechanisms of abrasive and erosive wear for ceramics and other hard materials, and the development of nanotribology test techniques. He has published over 200 papers and reports. He has recently been Chairman of the UK Institute of Physics Tribology Group, and was recently Secretary of the Surface Engineering Division of the UK Institute of Materials, Mining and Minerals. He is also a member of the International Advisory Editorial Boards of Tribology International, and Tribology – Materials Surfaces and Interfaces. He is a member of various standards committees including ASTM Committee G2 on Wear, ISO TC 206 Advanced Ceramics, and ISO TC 229 Nanotechnologies where he lead a project that recently published the first international standard on nanotechnologies.
