uc berkeley – Materials Science & Engineering

Prof. Messersmith on Brains On! Podcast

Prof. Messersmith was recently featured on the kids’ science podcast “How Do Stickers Stick?” by BrainsOn.org – one of the top science podcasts for school aged children, with over 1 million downloads per month! You can listen to the episode here or on your favorite podcast platform, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

The AI Revolution in Materials Science, Led by Prof. Persson

Kristin Persson, director of the Materials Project. (Credit: Roy Kaltschmidt/Berkeley Lab) The open-access materials database managed by Berkeley Lab has surpassed 650,000 registered users, enabling AI-ready scientific datasets at an unprecedented scale for batteries, quantum computing, microelectronics, and more. For more details, read https://lbl.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ebf9be162b79ac7f78f1b71ea&id=3715b12170&e=ea9f22c249

Peter Hosemann Named Adjunct Professor at Montanuniversitaet Leoben

Peter Hosemann has been awarded the honorable title of Adjunct Professor at Montanuniversitaet Leoben, his alma mater. This distinction is granted to alumni recognized for their outstanding achievements in research and teaching, demonstrated through international recognition and a significant publication record. The award will be presented on December 19th in Austria during the…

Prof. Katherine Faber Delivers 2025 PPG Foundation Lecture

On Oct. 23, 2025, Prof. Katherine T. Faber, Simon Ramo Professor of Materials Science at Caltech, delivered the PPG Foundation Lecture. The PPG Foundation Lectureship for Materials Innovation and Service Excellence is presented to distinguished professors from various institutions who exemplify extraordinary commitment to promoting diversity, overcoming personal and professional hardships, providing…

Prof. Omar Yaghi shares 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry!

Yaghi is a professor of chemistry with a joint appointment in MSE. He created a field called reticular chemistry, which involves stitching together molecular building blocks to form porous structures — metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) — with myriad applications. For details, please read: https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/10/08/uc-berkeleys-omar-yaghi-shares-2025-nobel-prize-in-chemistry/

Prof. Omar Yaghi Receives MRS’ Prestigious 2025 Von Hippel Award

This recognition honors Professor Yaghi’s founding of Reticular Chemistry and his groundbreaking development of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs)—crystalline materials with ultra-high porosity and tunable structures. His work has transformed how scientists design materials and has opened up entirely new fields of research and application. The Von Hippel Award recognizes “those qualities most prized by materials…

Prof. Peter Hosemann Joins Journal of Nuclear Materials as Associate Editor

Professor Hosemann will serve the nuclear-materials community in structural materials for nuclear applications, with emphasis on radiation damage, corrosion, and mechanical performance, among related topics. In this role, he will help guide the journal’s scientific direction, uphold rigorous peer-review standards, and accelerate the dissemination of impactful results. He looks forward to collaborating with authors and…

Advanced Electron Microscopy Reveals Short Range Ordering Motifs in Semiconductors

In a recent paper published in Science, Prof. Minor’s group used energy-filtered scanning nano electron diffraction (4D-STEM) to uniquely identify short range ordering motifs in GeSiSn. This publication represents the first direct evidence of SRO in a semiconductor material, an exciting new area for exploration in the field of microelectronics. Read the full article here.

Prof. Junqiao Wu’s group developed in-memory sensors that mimic neurons

Concept image of an autonomous underwater robotic snake surveying metal construction. (Image by Andrey Suslov/iStock) The Wu group reports a high-speed in-memory sensor based on vanadium dioxide (VO2) that operates without an external voltage by leveraging built-in electric fields within the Debye length. The “memsensor” mimics Caenorhabditis elegans chemosensory plasticity to guide a miniature…

A smarter approach to designing metamaterials

A team led by researchers in UC Berkeley’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (led by Prof. Rayne Zheng and postdoc Marco Maurizi) has developed a new AI-driven method for the fully automated design of engineering materials with complex physical behaviors. The approach enables the inverse design of metamaterials for advanced functionalities such as energy…