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Olga Ricketts-Peart is not what she calls a “science person.” But she loves science anyway. The 77-year-old has been attending “Science with Seniors,” a program offered at the Levy Senior Center in Evanston that’s gone online in the past few months due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The third Thursday of each month, graduate students from Northwestern University meet virtually with seniors from the Levy Center for lectures on science and technology, topics that range from sleep to solar cells.

Universities that have earned the Materials Research Science & Engineering Centers (MRSEC) grant award are engaged in collaborative interdisciplinary research at the very forefront of the field.  Exciting opportunities exist for graduate students, undergraduates, postdoctor scholars, and faculty. This short video summarizes important features of the MRSEC program at all Centers.

In collaboration with Amish Patel’s group (IRG-2), researchers in the previous and current Penn MRSEC discovered that disordered packings of hydrophilic nanoparticles infiltrated with hydrophobic polymers—amphiphilic nanoporous films—can spontaneously condense and exude water droplets from undersaturated vapor under isothermal conditions.

The reason microplastics are all around and even in us is because petroleum-based plastics last for hundreds of years. In our lifetimes they simply don’t go away. But degradable plastics, made from plants, do. Research at UCSD has now proven that those earth-friendly plastics disappear in a matter of a few months. Researchers ground up plant-based plastics into very small bits and tested them in several natural environments.

Northwestern Engineering’s Mark Hersam, whose research has led to more effective and sustainable nanomaterials used in electronics, energy storage, and medicine, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Nickel-based spinel oxides show exceptional self-lubrication at extreme temperatures, unlocking potential for aerospace and energy applications.

A class of synthetic soft materials called liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) can change shape in response to heat, similar to how muscles contract and relax in response to signals from the nervous system. 3D printing these materials opens new avenues to applications, ranging from soft robots and prosthetics to compression textiles.

This unique event intended to introduce students to the world of robotics and provide educators with robotics-related teaching resources. This year's conference focused on the exciting field of underwater research and exploration and how robots are dramatically changing the way this is accomplished. Students working in teams of two or four developed their own concept of an underwater robot and design and present a poster illustrating their concept during a poster session at the conference.

In October 2005, a "Materials Day at MIT" outreach symposium was held that focused on new research developments from the MIT MRSEC program. This full day symposium, organized by MIT's Materials Processing Center (MPC) and Industrial Liaison Program (ILP), was attended by representatives from a total of 42 different companies. Also in attendance were about 65 members of the MIT community, including faculty, graduate and undergraduate students.