Santosh Jha

Dr. Santosh K. Jha is currently the Director (R&D/Admin.) & Business Manager of Surmet Corp., an advanced specialty materials solution company, headquartered in Burlington, MA. Dr. Jha joined Surmet Corp. as a Materials Scientist in August 2002. Here, working with a group of scientists and engineers, he focused on the development of ALON and Spinel Optical Ceramics. His job responsibilities at Surmet include overseeing and managing multiple R&D programs sponsored by Surmet, the U.S. Department of Defense and other federal agencies. In this capacity, Santosh has helped Surmet carry out R&D programs worth over $110 million.

Santosh has over 20 years of R&D experience and has published more than 45 research papers in the areas of high temperature materials such as titanium aluminides and thermal barrier coatings, optical ceramics, and specialty coatings. Prior to joining Surmet in August 2002, Santosh worked at the University of Central Florida, Orlando. With a Ph.D. from IIT Bombay, Santosh also had the privilege of working as a Visiting Scientist at the KFA, Juelich, Germany as recipient of the prestigious Indo-German DLR fellowship.

Santosh is an active member of the Boston Chapter and had the honor to serve as its Chair in 2007-2008. He also has served 7 terms as Treasurer and, as a testimonial to his excellence and tireless commitment to the Chapter, he hopes to serve for this 8th term.