SAN ANTONIO — June 10, 2026 — SwRI’s James Dante has been named a Fellow of the Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP) in recognition of his outstanding and significant contributions of academic, mentoring, technical, and policy efforts in the field of materials protection and performance. As a Fellow, Dante will serve as an advisor to the AMPP.
Dante has a bachelor’s degree in physics from Johns Hopkins University and a master’s degree in materials science from the University of Virginia in 1993. He joined SwRI in 2003.
“Collaboration is key at SwRI,” Dante said. “Here, you can have an idea and not know what all the pieces are or how they fit. We gravitate toward applied research that requires you to bring knowledge and viewpoints from other people. It adds tremendous value.”
Dante has over three decades of experience in corrosion science, focusing primarily on military applications, and is a recognized expert in developing laboratory test methods to more accurately predict corrosion, corrosion cracking, and coating system degradation.
He has also developed electrochemical techniques for studying corrosion in nonaqueous liquids, including methods to compensate for solution resistance and to use supporting electrolyte salts in low-conductivity, high-vapor-pressure solvents.
Dante is also recognized as an expert in atmospheric corrosion and test method development. He has played a major role in developing sensors and data analysis methods to monitor coating degradation, corrosivity, corrosion rates, hydrogen embrittlement, and environmentally assisted fatigue and stress corrosion cracking under atmospheric conditions. He also pioneered the use of multi‑electrode array probes to study galvanic and crevice corrosion in atmospheric environments.
Dante has recently shifted toward working further downstream on practical problems, like collaborating with a structural group to assess the risks of changing coatings on aging aircraft. He also helped to found the Corrosion Research Laboratory at The University of Texas at San Antonio.
“I’m proud of the contributions I’ve made to improving accelerated corrosion tests,” he said. “These new tests more accurately replicate the damage seen in real-world applications and proved very important, especially for situations like in the military, where substances like chromates are being phased out due to their carcinogenic properties. It’s been rewarding to see this work go from fundamental research to something written into standards and actively used in practice.”
Dante is also a dedicated musician and notes that music, like science and engineering, is also best when it’s a collaborative process.
“Being visually impaired, I have to rely on other people,” he said. “On the science side, on the music side, you’re creating, and you’re doing it with other people. It’s fine enough playing on your own, but there’s just something special about collaboration.”
For more information, visit https://www.swri.org/industries/corrosion-science-process-engineering .