Geetha Berera

Biography

Geetha Berera organizes and teaches undergraduate laboratory classes while also developing experiments for DMSE. She has been teaching all sophomore and junior core laboratory classes beginning with 3.081 (Materials Structure Lab). Classes she teaches include 3.020 (Thermodynamics of Materials), 3.023 (Synthesis and Design of Materials), and 3.033 (Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Properties of Materials). She first joined MIT as a postdoctoral associate and continued as a research associate in Professor Ronald Latanision’s research group in DMSE’s H.H. Uhlig Corrosion Lab. Berera received a BS and an MS from Mysore University in India and an MS and a PhD in physics from Tufts University. She is a former Science Fellow of the Bunting Institute (now the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study at Harvard University).

Berera’s integrated research and hands-on teaching style spans a wide spectrum of materials science categories including crystal growth, thin films, structure and property evaluation, and corrosion. With a passion for learning while teaching, her guidance and input is sought by students at every level, postdocs, and other academic and industrial professionals. She is one of the founding trustees of a nonprofit organization for an educational initiative in Coorg, India, her birthplace. She and her organization’s team have collaborated in conducting 10 years of annual science fairs for local middle and high school students.

In her personal time, Berera enjoys hiking, reading, gardening, and home sciences. While she likes watching various sports, she takes pleasure in playing tennis and table tennis.