alumni News

Three Penn State faculty and two graduate students have received the 2021 Rustum and Della Roy Innovation in Materials Research Award.  

Vanderbilt and Penn State engineers have developed a novel approach to design and fabricate thin-film infrared light sources with near-arbitrary spectral output driven by heat, along with a machine learning methodology called inverse design that reduced the optimization time for these devices from weeks or months on a multi-core computer to a few minutes on a consumer-grade desktop.

Faced with a growing workload in its research labs, the Materials Research Institute (MRI) met the challenge by offering Penn State students an opportunity that most materials science and engineering undergraduates normally never receive. 

Society’s use of materials, with its humble beginnings in the Stone Age with natural materials, advanced through the Bronze Age and Iron Age with man-made alloys to the current Industrial Age and Modern Era. Now, in the 21st century, the functionality of society relies significantly on digital technologies in terms of integration of cyber-physical systems through digitization of knowledge, and the demand for new materials to enable and promote the digital age will continue to increase.

In the recently released 2022 U.S. News & World Report Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs rankings, the Penn State College of Engineering ranks No. 21 in the country, advancing one place from last year’s report. Among public engineering programs, Penn State ranks 12th in the nation.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has named Penn State the lead partner to both Florida International University (FIU) and North Carolina Central University (NCCU) as part of the Partnerships for Research and Education in Materials (PREM) program.

Furthering its mission to support diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB), the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS) has provided funding for each of its five departments to appoint faculty to serve as DEIB associate heads.

Registration is now open for Penn State’s annual Materials Day, to be held Oct. 12-13 as a hybrid event both virtually and on the University Park campus. This year’s theme is "The Intersection of Materials, Manufacturing and Sustainability."  

Each year, the University Staff Advisory Council (USAC) selects three outstanding staff for their accomplishments and contributions to the University and honors them at a celebratory event. 

The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a renewal of funding for the Materials Innovation Platform (MIP) national user facility at Penn State’s Materials Research Institute (MRI), the Two-Dimensional Crystal Consortium (2DCC). The 2DCC is one of four MIPs in the United States and was awarded $20.1 million over five years, an increase of 13% above the initial award in 2016.