Biography

Timothy J. Bunning is a Senior Materials Research Engineer in the Hardened Materials Branch of the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. After receiving his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 1992 from the University of Connecticut, he spent a short postdoctoral stint at Cornell (w/ C. Ober) before coming to the base first as a contractor and currently as a government employee. His current research interests center around advanced organic-based photonic materials and components, specifically passive and dynamic diffractive structures formed using complex holographic photopolymerization techniques, development of polymer photonic structures using PECVD, the structure development of polymer/liquid crystal composites, and liquid crystalline materials and technologies. He is currently the project lead for a diverse internal and external R&D effort that is developing new responsive materials and approaches for integration in optical sensing, laser beam control, and filtering applications.