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Dear Colleagues and Friends,

As we near the end of the fall semester, I wanted to take this opportunity in our biannual newsletter to highlight some of our recent exciting events and outstanding achievements by our faculty and students. As director, I continue to be impressed by the high caliber materials community at CU Boulder.

Building the materials community

The MSE Program hosted its inaugural “Innovation in Materials Science Symposium” in August 2022. The symposium was the first of its kind but was built from the rich history of excellence in Materials Science at CU Boulder over the past 30+ years. The symposium brought together over 180 attendees from across our campus as well as our neighbors at NREL, Colorado School of Mines, CU Anschutz Medical Campus and local companies.

The scientific talks from leaders in the field and over 50 posters from our trainees highlighted how materials are helping to address some of the world’s toughest problems including the energy crisis, the need for sustainable construction, and use of 3D printing to improve healthcare. We are excited to announce this symposium will be an annual event; next year's is planned for August 18, 2023. Sign up to receive more information about the symposium.

Undergraduate engineering research with science justice and policy

This past summer, the MSE Program held its first summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) on “Engineering Materials for a Healthy World”. The program offered a diverse array of research opportunities covering topics in energy, health, and infrastructure. Unique to our program was a weekly seminar series on science justice and science policy.

These concepts should be closely intertwined with research to solve real-world problems in a just and equitable way. We are in the early stages of planning for next summer, with applications opening up in early spring. Please encourage your undergraduate students to apply.

Big awards and high impact publications

Our faculty and students have been busy. In Professor Gang Cao’s Nature paper, he explains a new phenomenon of how electrons move in a honeycomb lattice for applications in quantum materials. Professor Wei Zhang is making strides to address the plastic waste problem through a new chemistry that enables chemical recycling of thermoset plastics; this work appears in Nature Chemistry. Professor Kristi Anseth has developed a novel expansion microscopy technique that uses materials to enable super-resolution of 3D tissues, which is described in Advanced Materials. Assistant Professor Wyatt Shields has had a tremendous year being awarded a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation along with NSF CAREER Award, Pew Biomedical Scholars Award, and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Program Award.

Several MSE faculty, who are also Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) fellows, will contribute to five recently funded multi-million dollar Department of Energy Centers (EFRCs) tackling climate change. Our PhD students, Tom Chaney and Keenan Wyatt were awarded NSF GRFP fellowships. Two MSE PhD alumni, Camila Uzcategui and Johnny Hergert who co-founded the company Vitro3D in 2020 have received their first investment round of $1.3 million. Vitro3D aims to bring volumetric 3D printing to the market.

I am incredibly proud of our graduate students and faculty that make CU Boulder one of the top institutions for materials research.

Professor Stephanie Bryant 
Director, Materials Science and Engineering Program