MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Professor Jennifer Rupp's lab works with solid-state materials for energy and information devices, including batteries, neuromorphic memory and computing logic. READ MORE

What’s New

New treatment could ease the passage of kidney stones

Professor Michael Cima is a part of a team of MIT and Massachusetts General Health Hospital researchers that has devised a potential new treatment that could make passing kidney stones faster and less painful. They have identified a combination of two drugs that relax the walls of the ureter, and can be delivered directly to the ureter. Researchers selected 18 possible drugs, exposed them to human ureteral cells grown in a lab dish, and then measured how much the drugs relaxed the cells.

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Professor Schuh named 2019 fellow of the National Academy of Inventors

Professor Chris Schuh is one of two MIT faculty members that have been selected as 2019 fellows of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). NAI fellows are those who "have demonstrated a highly prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on the quality of life, economic development and welfare of society." Election to NAI fellow status is the highest professional distinction awarded solely to academic inventors. Schuh and Professor Li-Huei Tsai join 21 MIT colleagues who have previously been elected.

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$Stacking faults on a refractory high entropy alloy$

Alloy Design Workshop

The 2019 Alloy Design Workshop will focus on micro-mechanics informed alloy design: overcoming scale-transition challenges, and it will be held on Friday, December 6, 2019. The Alloy Design Workshop is an annual event held on the last day of the fall MRS Meeting, as an opportunity for the MIT community and the materials community as a whole to congregate in an intimate setting to present and discuss new, unpublished research.

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Study on correlation between sleep patterns and grades

Professor Jeffrey Grossman facilitated an experiment in which 100 students in an MIT engineering class were given Fitbits in exchange for the researchers' access to a semester's worth of their activity data. The study started out as an attempt to find a correlation between physical exercise and academic performance, but researchers discovered there was a clear correlation between certain sleep habits and grades.

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This week's events

Week of December 2: MRS Fall Meeting in Boston all week. Tuesday: Special Seminar, Dr. Igal Brener, 3:00, Chipman Room 6-104; . Wednesday: SMSD Seminar, Prof. Ni Zhao, 4:00, 1-190; Materials Seminar, Prof. Alaro Mata, 4:00, 6-104 (Chipman Room). Thursday: 3.042 presentations, 1:00, 6-104 (Chipman Room); SMSD Seminar, Professor Seung Hwan Ko, 4:00, 3-333. Friday: Alloy Design Workshop, all day, Chipman Room; Special Seminar, Dr. Yingge Du, 2:00, 24-112.

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Spotlight

Ultrathin coating to protect 2-D materials from corrosion

Professors Ju Li and JJ Hu are a part of a team of researchers that has developed an ultrathin coating for use as a protective layer for important 2D materials. Many 2D materials have promising properties for optical, electronic, or other applications, but are held back by the ease with which they degrade when exposed to oxygen and water vapor. Now, these researchers have created a coating that is inexpensive and easily to apply and remove. This new coating, based on a family of compounds known as linear alkylamines, can be applied with a thinness of as little as 1 nanometer, is impervious to many liquids and solvents, blocks the penetration of oxygen, and generally extends the material's lifetime by 100. Their development could provide a way to overcome the "first hurdle" in attempting to work with promising 2D materials, opening up new areas of research.

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Magnified image of superconductor structure

Recent MIT faculty addition Prof. LeBeau receives PECASE

Professor Jim LeBeau joined our faculty on July 1. He was previously Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at North Carolina State University where his research focus was on developing new TEM and scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) techniques to determine the atomic structures of materials, thereby understanding ceramics, metals, and electronic materials in a way that we never have before. Professor LeBeau has a B.S. from Rensselaer Polytechnic University and a Ph.D. from UCSB, both in materials science and engineering. He holds the John Chipman Career Development Chair. As part of the MIT.nano research community, Prof. LeBeau brings unique skills and experience in TEM and STEM techniques and instrumentation, which will enrich materials research at MIT immediately and for decades to come.

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