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The Penn State Materials Research Institute (MRI) will hold its marquee annual event, Materials Day, on Oct. 20-21 on the University Park campus. This year’s theme is "Materials Impacting Society" and interested parties can register at the event site.  

Penn State alumna Imani Murray is 14 countries into her travel journey, and as she continues to grow her brand, she’s not stopping there.

Five faculty in Penn State’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MatSE) are members of research teams selected for two recently funded Energy Frontier Research Centers. The awards, announced on Aug. 25, are part of a $540 million initiative by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to invest in clean energy technologies and low-carbon manufacturing to help the U.S. achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

The coming decades present a host of challenges for our built environments: a rising global population combined with increasing urbanization; crumbling infrastructure and dwindling resources to rebuild it; and the growing pressures of a changing climate, to name a few.

Working together across disciplines, researchers from Penn State and the University of Freiburg are applying materials that adapt, respond to the environment, self-power, and regenerate to meet the challenges of adaptive architecture.

A team of researchers have observed and reported for the first time the unique microstructure of a novel ferroelectric material, enabling the development of lead-free piezoelectric materials for electronics, sensors, and energy storage that are safer for human use. This work was led by the Alem Group at Penn State and in collaboration with research teams at Rutgers University and the University of California, Merced.

Susan Sinnott, head and professor of materials science and engineering at Penn State, has been selected to receive the 2022 Medard W. Welch Award, the top research award from the American Vacuum Society (AVS).

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been selected to lead an Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) focused on polymer electrolytes for next-generation energy storage devices such as fuel cells and solid-state electric vehicle batteries.

A recent gift of a Thermotron humidity chamber from energy company Aramco Americas will support numerous research projects in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS).

As demand for solar energy rises around the world, scientists are working to improve the performance of solar devices — important if the technology is to compete with traditional fuels. But researchers face theoretical limits on how efficient they can make solar cells.