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Penn State College of Medicine is among the Mary Kay Ash Foundation’s 2022 cancer research grant recipients. The foundation announced $1 million in grants awarded to 10 individuals who are conducting groundbreaking research in cancers that primarily affect women. The grants fund innovative, translational research efforts to help with better detection, prognosis and treatment of cancer. Since 1996, the foundation has awarded more than $26 million to more than 265 researchers across the country.

Gail Matters, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, medicine and pharmacology, and her team received a grant to develop new tools to detect the early spread, or metastasis, of breast cancer. Additional team members include James Adair, professor of materials science and engineering, biomedical engineering and pharmacology at Penn State College of Engineering; Thomas Neuberger, director of the High Field Magnetic Resonance Imaging Facility at Penn State Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences; and Andrea Mastro, emeritus professor at Penn State Eberly College of Science.

Three materials science and engineering doctoral students — representing six in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences — are among the 21 new National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) recipients for the 2022-23 academic year.

With bans on the chemical being proposed in the U.S. and around the world, the challenge now is creating fluorine-free polymer membranes that do the same job. Karen Winey, the Harold Pender Professor in the departments of chemical & biomolecular engineering and materials science & engineering, has already started to address this challenge by using fluorine-free polymers with precisely placed sulfonate groups. When these proton exchange membranes (PEMs) come into contact with water, the sulfonate groups assemble to form intricate water channels for protons to flow through.

CoorsTek, a leading global manufacturer of engineered ceramics, is pleased to announce that Kevin Ressler is joining the company’s executive leadership team in the role of Chief Commercial Officer. In this position, Ressler will oversee the company’s international commercial functions responsible for driving continued revenue growth.

Penn State has named Corning Inc., one of the world's leading innovators in materials science, as its 2022 Corporate Partner of the Year. The annual award celebrates corporate partners that have demonstrated exceptional commitment in the promotion and support of Penn State, have excellent track records of philanthropy and research, and actively engage Penn State students and alumni in the workplace and the classroom.

To learn more about the impact of giving and the continuing need for support, visit raise.psu.edu.

The Penn State Materials Research Institute (MRI) will hold its marquee annual event, Materials Day, on Oct. 20-21 on the University Park campus. This year’s theme is "Materials Impacting Society" and interested parties can register at the event site.  

Penn State alumna Imani Murray is 14 countries into her travel journey, and as she continues to grow her brand, she’s not stopping there.

Five faculty in Penn State’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MatSE) are members of research teams selected for two recently funded Energy Frontier Research Centers. The awards, announced on Aug. 25, are part of a $540 million initiative by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to invest in clean energy technologies and low-carbon manufacturing to help the U.S. achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

The coming decades present a host of challenges for our built environments: a rising global population combined with increasing urbanization; crumbling infrastructure and dwindling resources to rebuild it; and the growing pressures of a changing climate, to name a few.

Working together across disciplines, researchers from Penn State and the University of Freiburg are applying materials that adapt, respond to the environment, self-power, and regenerate to meet the challenges of adaptive architecture.