Dr. Vaibhav Jain has been a Program Manager for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)/Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs at Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Research & Development (R&D) since October 2019. Dr Jain is involved with a mix of programs including additive manufacturing, strategic materials, batteries, and recycling. Previously, he was a materials engineer and program manager at DLA - Strategic Materials on the Strategic Planning Team where he managed programs including materials acquisitions, R&D, qualification efforts, and recycling.
Dr. Jain also held a position as project manager and subject matter expert in Materials Science and Engineering at Alion Science and Technology, where he conducted technical assessments, evaluations, and engineering analysis of various programs on critical and strategic materials for the Department of Defense. Some of his projects included packaging study of cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) for 3rd-generation focal plane arrays (FPAs), and dysprosium for permanent magnets in weapon systems and various explosives, fuses and their sensors.
Prior to that, he served as materials engineer at the Optical Sciences division at the Naval Research Laboratory from 2009-2013. His most recent research focuses on plasmonics, scanning probe microscopy, solar cells, chemical and biological sensors, and optical materials and imaging (SWIR, MWIR and VIR cameras). He received a Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in Macromolecular Science and Engineering in 2009. His graduate research work spans a range of topics in materials science, and photonics and optoelectronics, including the fabrication of fast-switching electrochromic devices for flat-panel displays; MEMS-based sensors; bending and linear actuators for artificial muscles, and use of dielectric reflector particles in coatings for protection against high-energy laser (HEL) weapons. He has co-authored over forty publications, one review article, has edited one book and has conducted more than fifty conference presentations.