Taylor D. Sparks portrait
  • Director of ReUSE REU, Materials Science and Engineering
  • Professor, Materials Science and Engineering
801-581-8632

Professional Service

  • Materials Research Data Alliance (MaRDA). Role: Member. Governing Council. 02/15/2024 - present
  • TMS. Role: Member. Public & Governmental Affairs Committee. 01/01/2024 - present
  • TMS. Role: Member. 2023-present Content Development & Dissemination Committee. 06/01/2023 - present
  • TMS. Role: Member. Organizing Committee for the 2nd World Congress on Artificial Intelligence in Materials and Manufacturing. 01/01/2023 - present
  • TMS. Role: Instructor. Taught the "Fundamental Theory and Computational Modelling" module as part of the TMS High Entropy Alloys: Fundamentals, Alloy Design, Properties, and Potential Applications workshop. 11/08/2022 - 11/10/2022
  • Computational Materials Science (Elsevier). Associate Editor. 01/01/2022 - present
  • TMS. Role: Member. Content Development & Dissemination Committee. 01/01/2022 - present
  • TMS. Role: member. "Employing Artificial Intelligence to Accelerate Development and Implementation of Materials and Manufacturing Innovations." Lead study by: The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS), supported by: the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). 07/01/2021 - 08/01/2021
  • TMS. Role: Instructor. TMS Learning Pathways: Advanced Materials Manufacturing, Dec 7-9 2020 Virtual Workshop and Professional Development course. Instructor for "Introduction to Machine Learning, Session 1: Overview, Tools, Frameworks, Application to Materials Science" and "Introduction to Machine Learning, Session 2: Knowledge Extraction, Feature Engineering, Best Practices". 12/07/2020 - 12/09/2020
  • The Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society (TMS). Role: Conference Chair. TMS World Congress on Artificial Intelligence in Materials and Manufacturing (AIM 2022). Pittsburgh Marriott City Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, April 3-6 April 2022. 11/03/2020 - 05/01/2022
  • Scientific Reports. Role: Chief Guest Editor. Chief Guest Editor for special issue on "Machine learning for materials chemistry" along with co-guest editors Dr. Mohamed Elhoseny, Ting Liao, and Hao Yu . 09/01/2020 - present
  • TMS. Role: Invited Speaker. TMS webinar series "Transitioning to Online Instruction: Tips, Tools and Techniques". 04/09/2020 - 04/09/2020
  • The Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society (TMS) and the American Ceramic Society (ACerS). Role: ACerS representative. MS&T21 Program Coordinating Committee, Columbus, Ohio, USA, October 17-21 2021. 04/01/2020 - 10/31/2021
  • Data in Brief (Elsevier). Role: member. Editorial Board. 09/23/2019 - present
  • American Ceramic Society. Role: Member. Committee on Meetings. 06/01/2019 - present
  • National Science Foundation. Role: PI. Organizer of the SSMCDAT2020 Hackathon. This hackathon brings together ~100 participants for a 3-day hackathon where teams of 2-6 individuals work on solving materials chemistry problems using data science. 06/01/2019 - 09/01/2022
  • Computational Materials Science. Chief Guest Editor for special issue on "Machine learning and data-driven design of materials" along with co-guest editors Dr. Anton Oliynyk and Dr. Vitaliy Romaka. 06/01/2019 - 06/01/2020
  • Scientific Reports (Nature publishing group). Role: Member. Editorial Board. 05/20/2019 - present
  • Machine Learning in Materials Science Workshop. Role: co-organizer. Co-organized the second annual event for a 1.5 day workshop at the University of Houston with 7 invited speakers, a poster session, and 75 participants. 04/05/2019 - 04/07/2019
  • American Ceramic Society. Role: Member. Committee on Meetings. 05/01/2018 - present
  • Machine Learning in Materials Science Workshop. Co-organized the second annual event for a 1 day workshop at the University of Utah with 7 invited speakers, a poster session, and 70 participants. 04/01/2018 - 04/02/2018
  • TMS The Minerals Metals and Materials Society. Role: member. Materials Data Infrastructure Task Force . 12/01/2017 - present
  • Integrating Materials and Manufacturing Innovation. Editorial Board Member. 02/18/2017 - present
  • Journal of Electronic Materials. reviewer. 08/01/2013 - present
  • Acta Materialia. reviewer. 07/30/2013 - present
  • Journal of Alloys and Compounds. reviewer. 06/09/2013 - present

Honors & Awards

  • 2023 Materials Science & Engineering Department Research Award. University of Utah, 04/15/2023
  • 2023 Key expert resource in the Trew Marketing State of Marketing to Engineers Research Report. Trew Marketing , 01/01/2023
  • 2022 Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellowship. Royal Society , 09/01/2022
  • Inaugural John G. Francis Prize for Undergraduate Student Mentoring. University of Utah, 05/01/2022
  • Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award for the College of Mines and Earth Sciences. College of Mines and Earth Sciences, University of Utah, 05/06/2021
  • Outstanding Reviewer Award of 2020. Acta Materialia, 02/24/2021
  • Journal of Materials Research Early Career Scholars in Materials Science 2018. JMR, 11/28/2017
  • Excellence in Education Recognition Award. LDSSA and Salt Lake University Institute, 04/05/2017
  • runner up for the "Materials Science and Engineering Data Challenge" . Air Force Research Lab, National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Science Foundation and Challenge.gov, 05/19/2016
  • 2016 Faculty Recognition Award. University of Utah Career Services, 03/04/2016

Internal Service

  • Materials Science & Engineering Faculty Search Committee . Chair, 09/25/2023 - 09/24/2024. Department service.
  • University of Utah Academic Senate Executive Committee. Member, 09/01/2021 - 08/01/2022. University service.
  • University of Utah Academic Senate. Senator for the College of Engineering, 09/01/2020 - 08/01/2023. University service.
  • Department RPT Committee. Chair, 05/01/2020 - 05/01/2022. Department service.
  • NSF ReUSE REU Site for Materials Science & Engineering Department. Co-Director, 04/01/2020 - present. Department service.
  • Faculty Career Council. Member, 08/01/2019 - present. College service.
  • Educational Delivery and Partnerships working group of the Educational Futures & Student Success Taskforce. Member, 01/31/2019 - present. University service.
  • Director of Materials Characterization Laboratory. Director, 08/01/2014 - 08/01/2019. Department service.

Outreach

  • STEM day at Valley Elementary School, Eden, Utah. 04/10/2019 - 04/11/2019
  • "How to design an effective research poster" ACCESS Program. 04/01/2019 - present
  • Bilingual Spanish/English K-12 Outreach. 07/01/2017 - present
  • State of Utah Science Olympiad. Materials Science Event Coordinator. 04/01/2014 - present

In the Media