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The LRSM spearheaded the inaugural Diversity Equity Engagement at Penn in STEM (DEEPenn STEM) weekend in October 2022. The initiative aims to proactively educate and recruit students from ethnically and racially minoritized communities (i.e. URMs), women, and first-generation low-income (FGLI) students to STEM-related graduate programs at Penn. 

The University of Delaware MRSEC has shown, for the first time, that click chemistry can be used to functionalize multiple families of porous cages.

This research effort, carried out by the University of Delaware's MRSEC, provides a potential hybrid material platform for optoelectronic device applications in the THz frequency domain.

An outreach event led by CHARM postdocs and grad students drew almost 200 attendees in partnership with a local library. Students aged preK-8 participated in seven hands-on demonstration booths, including several booths that focused on materials science principles.

The Northwestern University MRSEC supported the new exhibition Paint the Eyes Softer: Mummy Portraits from Roman Egypt at the Northwestern University Block Museum. The exhibit explores the art and science of mummy relics from the Fayum region in Egypt during the Roman period. In a unique interdisciplinary collaboration, the exhibition featured results from an advanced undergraduate seminar, which was co-listed in both the Department of  Materials Science and Engineering and the Department of Classics.

The National Society of Black Physicists recently held their Annual Conference, the largest academic meeting of minority physicists in the US in Knoxville, Tennessee.

The Center for Advanced Materials & Manufacturing (CAMM) launched a biweekly “Machine Learning for Materials Discovery” Hackathon, bringing together students and researchers from materials science, physics, and data science to explore how AI can accelerate materials design. Over 5 intensive sessions since October 2025, participants worked through hands-on problems that linked real experimental data to modern machine learning workflows.

The Harvard MRSEC engages K-12 teachers and students through the science of everyday materials. Through a collaboration with Bite-Scized Education, led by teacher Kate Strangfeld, the MRSEC co-develops workshops for teachers and after-school programs for K-12 students that are modeled on the Science and Cooking course developed by David Weitz and Michael Brenner,  and teach science through food and cooking.

Ferroelectric ferromagnets are a holy grail of materials research, since they would enable electrically  switchable magnetism with diverse potential applications in information technology, sensing and new  “electro-magneto-mechanical” devices.