photograph of Prof Eric Payton taken at the University of Cincinnati in August 2022

About the PI

Principal Investigator
Updated

27 August 2026

  paytonej@ucmail.uc.edu

  +1 (513) 556-0260

  +1 (513) 549-5346

  Department of Mechanical, Materials, and Industrial Engineering, 2901 Woodside Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0072 USA

Dr. Eric Payton is the Principal Investigator for the Critical Alloy Research & Discovery Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati.

Dr. Payton’s laboratory addresses the sustainability of critical materials through fundamental research into alloy design, discovery, and processing, enabling design engineers to balance performance with responsible resource utilization. Employing state-of-the-art computational and quantitative characterization techniques, his group seeks to lend insights into microstructure evolution during processing and chemo-mechanical environmental interactions in service, then use this knowledge to develop practical tools for predicting material properties. Prior to joining the faculty of the University of Cincinnati in 2022, Dr. Payton served for five years as the Research Leader for the Metallic Materials and Processing Team at the Air Force Research Laboratory, Materials and Manufacturing Directorate. Before entering government service, he was an Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, and held post-doctoral positions at both Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany and the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin, Germany. He obtained his doctorate in Materials Science and Engineering from The Ohio State University. Dr. Payton’s colleagues suspect he would be a good addition to their trivia night team; however, his area of trivia mastery may be limited to turn-of-the century musicians. Dr. Payton is an enthusiastic advocate of scientific collaboration, structured programming, learner-centered pedagogy, and vegetables.

The PI’s full list of publications can be found here:.

Scientometrics

Peer-reviewed publications
72
Total citations
1948
H-index
23
G-index
42
i10-index
47
m-quotient
1.05

Top 10 Highest Cited Papers

# Paper Year Citations
1 On the formation and growth of intermetallic phases during interdiffusion between low-carbon steel and aluminum alloys
doi:10.1016/j.actamat.2010.11.023
2011 514
2 CALPHAD-aided development of quaternary multi-principal element refractory alloys based on NbTiZr
doi:10.1016/j.jallcom.2018.12.325
2019 86
3 On the characterization of recrystallized fraction using electron backscatter diffraction: A direct comparison to local hardness in an IF steel using nanoindentation
doi:10.1016/j.msea.2010.08.063
2010 77
4 Suppression of Ni<sub>4</sub> Ti<sub>3</sub> Precipitation by Grain Size Refinement in Ni‐Rich NiTi Shape Memory Alloys
doi:10.1002/adem.201000101
2010 75
5 Improvement of NiTi Shape Memory Actuator Performance Through Ultra‐Fine Grained and Nanocrystalline Microstructures
doi:10.1002/adem.201000285
2011 72
6 Microstructure Evolution during Supersolvus Heat Treatment of a Powder Metallurgy Nickel-Base Superalloy
doi:10.1007/s11661-011-1035-y
2012 68
7 Simulation study of effects of initial particle size distribution on dissolution
doi:10.1016/j.actamat.2008.09.010
2009 68
8 Plastic Flow and Microstructure Evolution during Thermomechanical Processing of a PM Nickel-Base Superalloy
doi:10.1007/s11661-013-1675-1
2013 62
9 The Kinetics of Precipitate Dissolution in a Nickel-Base Superalloy
doi:10.1007/s11661-017-4322-4
2017 43
10 Analysis of EBSD Grain Size Measurements Using Microstructure Simulations and a Customizable Pattern Matching Library for Grain Perimeter Estimation
doi:10.1007/s11661-017-4031-z
2017 43

Top 10 Collaborators

Collaborator
Coauthored Papers
G. Eggeler
13
O. N. Senkov
10
S. L. Semiatin
10
V. A. Yardley
8
A. L. Pilchak
7
V. Sinha
7
A. R. C. Gerlt
6
F. Zhang
6
M. Gonzales
6
M. J. Mills
6

Word Cloud from Titles and Abstracts

Word cloud from publication titles, abstracts, and keywords

Cumulative Citations Over Time

Citation Map