For many new faculty members in the College of Engineering, the interdisciplinary advantages of the University of California, Davis, are welcome discoveries. Mingwei Zhang, a new assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, was already very familiar with the unique connections UC Davis creates across campus though.
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.
The first time he learned about the science behind teaching, Materials Science and Engineering Assistant Professor of Teaching Amir Saeidi knew how he wanted to make a difference. The social sciences and humanities students in his pedagogical fellowship program were all familiar with concepts like active learning, but Saeidi had never seen anything like them in his engineering classes and decided he needed to use and promote that.
University of California, Davis, Chancellor Gary S. May has appointed Professor Emeritus Jeffery Gibeling to serve as the interim vice chancellor for research effective March 1. May will form a recruitment advisory committee soon to conduct a nationwide search for the next vice chancellor. He anticipates Gibeling will serve in the interim role for approximately six months.
Alumni Robert ’73 and Carolyn Caligiuri ’74 have given a $1.27 million endowment to the MSE department at UC Davis to establish the Amiya Mukherjee Memorial Fellowship in honor of Robert Caligiuri’s first mentor. The gift, the largest ever to MSE, will support competitive doctoral students and boost the department's stature.
In June 2022, Materials Science and Engineering Associate Professor and UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellow Marina S. Leite was elevated to senior member status by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). Senior membership is the highest grade that IEEE members can apply for, and achieving this honor requires an extensive professional background in IEEE-designated fields over the span of ten years with five years of significant performance.
