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Assistant Professor Marie Charpagne earned a DOE Early Career Research Program award for pioneering work that harnesses radiation itself to strengthen nuclear reactor materials, rather than fighting its damaging effects. Her approach uses radiation to create protective nanostructures in specially designed alloys that continuously repair damage during operation, potentially enabling self-healing materials for next-generation nuclear systems.

Professor Dallas Trinkle and colleagues have provided the first quantitative explanation for how magnetic fields slow carbon atom movement through iron, a phenomenon first observed in the 1970s but never fully understood. Published in Physical Review Letters, their computer simulations reveal that magnetic field alignment changes the energy barriers between atomic "cages," offering potential pathways to reduce the energy costs and CO2 emissions associated with steel processing.

Professor Qian Chen has been elected vice chair of the American Chemical Society's Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry (COLL) Awards Committee, beginning January 1, 2026. Chen joins fellow MatSE faculty member Professor Rosa Espinosa Marzal, who began her term as COLL division chair at the start of 2026.

Professor and Racheff Faculty Scholar Cecilia Leal was recently featured on The Academic Minute, a daily audio module airing on 70 stations across the United States and Canada, where she discussed her lab's discovery that fat cells undergo sophisticated internal transformations at the molecular level during obesity. The research, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, reveals that fat molecules reorganize into tightly packed crystalline structures during caloric overload, challenging conventional views of obesity and opening new avenues for therapeutic approaches.

Professor and Racheff Faculty Scholar Pinshane Huang has achieved one of Physics World magazine's Top 10 Breakthroughs of the Year for 2025 for capturing the highest-resolution images ever taken of individual atoms. Using electron ptychography, Huang's team achieved an unprecedented resolution of 15 picometers and became the first to directly visualize moiré phasons—collective vibrations in twisted 2D materials that had only existed in theory. 

Associate Professor Nicola H. Perry has been awarded an American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund New Directions Grant for her project on accelerating materials design for intermediate-temperature CO₂ capture and valorization through a combinatorial thin film kinetics platform. The research addresses a critical climate challenge by developing ceramic materials that capture and transform CO₂ emissions into value-added chemicals without costly precious metal catalysts. This latest award builds on Perry's sustainability-focused research portfolio, including a 2023 ACS Principal Investigator Development in Sustainability Grant.