Donor Impact

Mingwei Zhang, Ph.D. ’21 used his time at UC Davis to grow his research career and plans to pay forward the generosity and mentorship he received from the materials science and engineering department. 

One of materials science and engineering major Ethan Suwandi’s favorite things to do is “nerd out” about materials with his friends, classmates and professors at UC Davis.

“It’s very cathartic, at least for me,” he said. “Materials is a niche topic that you can’t discuss with many people, so I think all of us would take the chance to say, ‘look at this cool thing I found’ or ‘look at this cool thing I’m researching and let me tell you all about the mechanisms behind it!’”

Recent materials science and engineering graduate Griffin Hart ’21 used UC Davis to try college a second time and was able to make the most of his experience.

Hart started college at Humboldt State University, but didn’t know what he wanted to do. This made him feel unmotivated and that was reflected in his grades, so he moved home and enrolled in community college. He became interested in sustainability and through his calculus, physics and chemistry classes, he began to see how much he could do with math and science.

Fourth-year materials science and engineering (MSE) major Nicole Shuman found materials science as a returning college student and is determined to use her knowledge to inspire others through outreach, teaching and mentorship.

Shuman started her career managing a multimillion-dollar big box retail company in the Los Angeles area. After 15 years, she moved to the Sacramento area for a job, but it fell through, and she found herself missing the connections she had and looking for a new opportunity.

Materials science and engineering (MSE) Ph.D. student Yiqing Xia has been chosen as a presenter for the 2021 North American Materials Colloquium Series, a competitive virtual materials science seminar series involving over 35 MSE programs from around the country. He will present his recent research on the thermodynamic and kinetic behavior of nano-confined liquids on April 8-9, representing UC Davis, the MSE department and his research on confined liquids and glassy materials.

By Brady Oppenheim

The UC Davis Materials Science and Engineering Department congratulates Erdem Eren, whose poster was recognized with a graduate-student award at the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) Annual Meeting.

Eren is part of the department’s Mason Research Group, which specializes in theoretical and computational techniques to study the evolution of materials.

By Bonnie Dickson

The UC Davis Department of Materials Science and Engineering recently established several new fellowships and awards to support graduate engineering research and education. Luis Sotelo Martin, a first-year doctoral student in the department, is the first recipient of a graduate student researcher award generously funded by Jeffery and Marsha Gibeling.