The materials science and engineering researcher and an interdisciplinary team formed at the Research Corporation for Science Advancement's Scialog have received funding to investigate water-free mining of valuable metals like iron and lithium.
In collaboration with materials company Homerun Resources, Inc., UC Davis engineering researchers have developed a one-step laser technique that purifies raw silica sand to over 99.99% silica. This is the first step in a multiphase project to create a clean-energy pathway to producing silicon.
Researchers from UC Davis and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have developed deep-learning model ensembles to investigate the magnetic properties of perovskite oxide multilayers and gain key insights into how they might be used in next-generation electronic devices.
With a Seed Grant for International Activities from UC Davis Global Affairs, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Yayoi Takamura is collaborating with researchers from Chile to use plasma-enhanced pulsed laser deposition to synthesize and characterize thin films for sustainable energy technologies.
Two Ph.D. candidates in materials science and engineering at UC Davis will reside at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to conduct research as part of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research Program.
Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Scott McCormack is part of a multi-university team awarded $7.5 million over five years from the Department of Defense Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, or MURI, program.
New research published in Physical Review Letters shows how an experiment with lasers and magnets resulted in the domain walls within ferromagnetic layers moving at previously unheard-of speeds, paving the way for more sustainable and energy-efficient data storage.
Materials science and engineering professor Marina Leite has received $1 million to make switchable photonic devices more efficient with hybrid perovskites, a class of materials with physical properties that can be controlled through light alone.
Marina Leite is on her fourth cell phone. A professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Davis, and a Chancellor’s Fellow, Leite is holding out on upgrading her phone because tossing her old one would produce excess waste.
The inside of a living cell is crowded with large, complex molecules. New research on how these molecules could spontaneously organize themselves could further our understanding of how cells manage their essential biochemistry in the crowded space.
We all have experience with water turning from solid to liquid to gas and back again.
But knowing what happens scientifically during those transitions is an essential, yet unanswered scientific question that Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Jeremy Mason and his research group are pursuing.
Researchers at the University of California, Davis College of Engineering are using machine learning to identify new materials for high-efficiency solar cells. Using high-throughput experiments and machine learning-based algorithms, they have found it is possible to forecast the materials’ dynamic behavior with very high accuracy, without the need to perform as many experiments.
Peifen Lyu ’19, Ph.D. ’25 has created a magnesium-based nanoscale optical device that dissolves in water and changes colors in displays. It creates a color change across several applications, such as a coating for pills or as sensors in environmental science for testing different chemical compositions.
Materials Science and Engineering Ph.D. candidate Cassondra Brayfield was named a recipient of the Cadence Diversity in Technology Scholarship under its Women in Technology program. Brayfield was selected based on leadership skills, recognition of accomplishments, endorsement from professors, and drive to shape the world of technology.
With support from the Department of Energy Office of Science’s Graduate Student Research program, Materials Science and Engineering Ph.D. student Dayne Sasaki will be using the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab to conduct groundbreaking research that combines the fields of artificial spin ices and complex oxides.
The first generation of computers used vacuum tubes. The second, transistors and the third, integrated circuits. Each new generation allowed computers to be faster, smaller and more energy efficient. Now, as the world stretches beyond the limits of integrated circuits, what does the fourth generation of computing look like?
Materials Science and Engineering Ph.D. candidate Pallavi D. Sambre is taking the first steps toward engineering lifelike artificial materials that reconstitute a cell’s ability to change their membrane shape to move from one part of the body to another.
Second-year materials science and engineering Ph.D. student Margaret Duncan, part of Associate Professor Marina Leite’s lab, received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship. The fellowship is the oldest and one of the most prestigious of its kind and it recognizes and supports outstanding STEM graduate students who have the potential to become knowledgeable experts and significantly contribute to research, teaching, and innovation.
UC Davis engineers are innovating at high and low temperatures to enable travel at hypersonic speeds and sustainably keep food safe and fresh, respectively.
Materials Science and Engineering Assistant Professor Scott McCormack and his team received $1.4M from the Air Force Office of Science and Research to reduce uncertainty and standardized processing techniques for ultra-high temperature ceramics.
Ultra-high temperature ceramics (UHTCs) are ceramic materials that melt at temperatures above 3000˚C, nearly 5500˚F. Their ability to withstand extreme heat loads makes them ideal for building hypersonic vehicles and platforms, but UHTCs can be difficult to process reliably.
Materials Science and Engineering Associate Professor Roopali Kukreja has received the prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (NSF CAREER) Award.
Materials Science and Engineering Assistant Professor Seung Sae Hong recently received a prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (NSF CAREER) Award. The CAREER award is the agency’s highest honor for young faculty. It recognizes those with the potential to be leaders in their fields and funds five-year research and education projects that should serve as the foundation for their careers.
In the spring of 2021, a team of undergraduate students at UC Davis collaborated with Elcon Precision on a project as part of the EMS 188 course. The students were excited to explore the question of nucleation and discoloration in high calcia alumina.
Professor Ricardo Castro teaches engineering students to think outside the box and to contemplate the unlikely, but not always impossible, real-world applications of materials science based on the powers of superheroes.
