alumni News

At its Sept. 5 meeting, the Penn State Board of Trustees Committee on Research and Technology heard from Andrew Read, senior vice president for research, about the mission of the Penn State Research Foundation, as well as an update on its activities.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced today (Sept. 4) that it will continue to support Penn State’s Center for Three-Dimensional Ferroelectric Microelectronics Manufacturing (3DFeM) as an Energy Frontier Research Center.

LionGlass, a new family of glass engineered by researchers at Penn State, has secured its first corporate partner, a move toward bringing the ecofriendly alternative to standard soda lime silicate glass to market.

If alumni of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences really are a big family, then it is fitting they chose to celebrate a milestone by laughing with — and at — each other.

The glass bottles we toss in the recycling bin don’t always end up where we expect. Only about 33% of glass is recycled in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, partly due to expenses like sorting bottles by color. Penn State scientists recently found that mass-produced soda-lime silicate glass from post-consumer bottles of different colors can be safely melted together in the recycling process, which could potentially lead to more bottles being recycled.

Four projects were recently awarded Penn State Commercialization GAP funding. The GAP Fund, formerly known as the Fund for Innovation, aims to accelerate the development of promising research across the University by closing the funding gaps between proof-of-concept research and readiness for commercialization.  

Clive Randall, distinguished professor of materials science and engineering and director of the Materials Research Institute at Penn State, has been named an Evan Pugh University Professor. The Evan Pugh University Professorship is the highest distinction bestowed upon faculty by Penn State.

The winners of the 16th annual Materials Visualization Competition (MVC), a scientific visual and artistic competition sponsored by the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MatSE) and the Materials Research Institute (MRI) at Penn State, have been announced. MVC celebrates the quality of research in materials at Penn State and promotes awareness of materials science through visualization.

The 2024 David Ford McFarland Award Lecture for Achievement in Metallurgy will be held at 3:05 p.m. Thursday, April 11, in 111 Wartik Laboratory on Penn State's University Park campus. Melissa Marshall, vice president of global audit, risk and controls at Westinghouse Electric Co., will deliver the lecture, “How MatSE prepared me for a career that I love (outside of MatSE).”

The second 2024 Richard E. Tressler Lectures in Materials will be held at 3:05 p.m. Thursday, March 28, in 111 Wartik Laboratory on the Penn State University Park campus. Jennifer Lalli, president at NanoSonic Inc., will deliver the lecture “A Penn State polymer chemist’s role in the commercialization of green nanotechnology.”