Newsletter: Inventors, Innovators, and Next-Generation Materials

From the Chair

Happy New Year! 2025 marks the 60th anniversary of Cornell's Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and we cannot wait to celebrate our "diamond anniversary" this year. There is so much to be excited about. In just the past six months, as you'll see below, we've cut the ribbon on new research and teaching lab space, received national recognition for our faculty's contributions to science and engineering, and pushed the boundaries of what is possible in materials science. This momentum builds on a long history of excellence within Cornell Engineering, which throughout this academic year, is celebrating 140 years since the first woman enrolled in our college. In March, which happens to be Women's History Month, we will be hosting a two-day symposium (March 21-22, 2025) recognizing this incredible milestone. Please also save the date for our 60th Anniversary celebration over Homecoming Weekend, October 3-5, 2025. I hope to see you in Ithaca for one, if not all, of our many upcoming celebrations. Here's to a wonderful year!

In community,

Lara Estroff, Chair

Featured News

Cornell University, Tang Hall on the engineering quad

The opening of the Martin Y. and Margaret Lee Tang Hall marks a transformative moment for our department and all of Cornell Engineering, enhancing the quad with new teaching, research, and community spaces. This new facility fosters collaboration across disciplines with teaching laboratories neighboring each other on the second and third floors for both materials scientists and biomedical engineers. State-of-the-art labs on the fourth floor are occupied by research groups led by Andrej Singer, Eric Dufresne, Yu Zhong, and Uli Weisner.

Wiesner elected to National Academy of Inventors

Among Uli Wiesner's notable inventions are fluorescent core-shell silica nanoparticles, known as C’Dots, that are paving the way for advancements in diagnosis and treatment of cancer and other diseases. He is co-director of the NIH-funded MSKCC-Cornell Center for Translation of Cancer Nanomedicine and co-founder of several startups pushing C’Dots into human clinical trials.

Cha elected to American Physical Society

Judy Cha, the Lester B. Knight Director of the Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility, focuses her research on synthesis and transport properties of topological and 2D nanomaterials and their phase transformations in order to understand the structure-electronic property relationships of quantum nanomaterials. Cornell Engineering also recognized her with a Research Excellence Awards in 2024.

Cornell engineers key to multiple federal microelectronics projects

Debdeep Jena and other Cornell faculty are leading projects designed to accelerate research into quantum and communications leap-ahead technologies with support from the U.S. Department of Defense. Jena also recently received a Teaching Excellence Award from Cornell Engineering for his inspiring lectures in semiconductor courses and his influential textbook, “Quantum Physics of Semiconductor Materials and Devices."

Graduate Symposium celebrates research, innovation, and collaboration

The 9th Annual symposium, organized for and by our graduate students, featured research presentations, an industry panel, and a vibrant poster session. The inaugural Dr. Lei Tian ’00 awards were presented for Best Presentations.

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Research Briefs

Assistant professor Mostafa Hassani (right) and doctoral student Qi Tang work with a custom-built platform to launch supersonic microprojectiles and study how high-speed metallic collisions form solid-state bonds.

Supersonic microprojectiles reveal new insights into metal bonding

Featuring Mostafa Hassani

Microscopy of a hypergolic, nanoporous carbon engineered at Cornell to have the highest surface area ever reported.

Rocket-inspired reaction yields carbon with record surface area

Featuring Emmanuel Giannelis

Doctoral students Reilly Lynch, left, and Thomas Ugras in the Robinson Group Lab.

Hidden structural states discovered in inorganic nanoclusters

Featuring Richard D. Robinson

supramolecular porous crystal assembled from fused macrocycle-cage molecules.

Fused molecules are building blocks for safer lithium-ion batteries

Featuring Yu Zhong

Graduate Student Spotlights

George Padilla is a master’s student in materials science and engineering and the Ezra’s Bridge program from Philadelphia. He earned his B.S. in biology at Temple University and now studies the physics underlying dense liquid droplets made from enzymes under the guidance of Julia Dshemuchadse at Cornell.

Deepanjali Chowdhury is a doctoral student in materials science and engineering from Sugar Land, Texas. She earned her bachelor’s degree at Texas A&M University and now studies the use of machine learning for the improvement of electrochemical carbon reduction under the guidance of Tobias Hanrath at Cornell.

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Giving Opportunities

There are many ways to support our students and faculty. Your generosity funds experiential learning opportunities for our students and provides them with access to state-of-the-art equipment and facilities. Please consider a gift in honor of our 60th anniversary that will help us continue to lead in materials and engineering research and education.

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