News: Faculty

Making brain implants smaller could prolong their lifespan

May 17, 2017

Michael Cima has a new paper on brain implants and gliosis, which is scarring produced by the implant. This kind of implant is used for deep brain stimulation to treat Parkinson’s disease, among other uses, but about half of them fail within six months due to gliosis. The new study found…   more

2017 Faculty Promotions

May 15, 2017

Several DMSE faculty promotions will be taking effect starting July 1, 2017.  Congratulations to: Polina Anikeeva, Antoine Allanore, Niels Holten-Andersen, and Silvija Gradecak for their promotions this year! …   more

J-WAFS awards $1.4 million in third round of seed grant funding

May 11, 2017

Professor Antoine Allanore was awarded an Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and Food Security Lab (J-WAFS) seed grant for his project "Affordable Potassium Fertilizer from K Feldspar for Africa."  J-WAFS at MIT has announced its third round of seed grant funding to the MIT community. J‑WAFS…   more

Sadoway named AIST John Elliott Lecturer

May 9, 2017

Don Sadoway was honored with the John F. Elliott Lectureship Award by the Association for Iron and Steel Technology (AIST) at AISTech2017.  John F. Elliott Lectureship Award — Established in 1990, this honorary lectureship is designed to acquaint students and engineers…   more

High-temperature devices made from films that bend as they “breathe”

May 9, 2017

Carrying out maintenance tasks inside a nuclear plant puts severe strains on equipment, due to extreme temperatures that are hard for components to endure without degrading. Now, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have come up with a radically new way to make actuators that could be used in such…   more

MIT Awards Ceremony 2017

May 4, 2017

  Laya and Jerome B. Wiesner Student Art Awards: Rachel Osmundsen ‘ 17  Earll M. Murman Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising - Elsa Olivetti Bose Award for Excellence in Teaching…   more

National Academy of Sciences elects six MIT professors for 2017

May 3, 2017

Professor Klavs Jensen is among six MIT Faculty members who have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in recognition of their "distinguised and continuing achievements in original research." The group was among 84 new members and 21 new foreign associates elected to the NAS.…   more

Geoffrey Beach: Drawn to explore magnetism

April 24, 2017

Geoffrey Beach has been tinkering and building things most of his life, but it wasn’t until his undergraduate studies in physics that he zeroed in on the topic that has dominated his research ever since: the study of magnetism and how to control it. “There are many thousands of…   more

Not stuck on silicon

April 19, 2017

A new technique developed by Jeehwan Kim and a team of researchers may vastly reduce the overall cost of wafer technology and enable devices made from more exotic, higher-performing semiconductor materials than conventional silicon. The new method, reported today in Nature, uses graphene…   more

How some battery materials expand without cracking

April 13, 2017

A new paper from Yet-Ming Chiang in Nano Letters describes for the first time what happens in rechargeable lithium-ion and other battery electrodes when they expand and contract as the lithium ions move in and out during charging and discharging. This had been a mystery, since these materials…   more

MIT.nano has its first public showing

April 10, 2017

The brand new, state-of-the-art MIT.nano building had its first public showing recently. The new building promises to be an enormously influential toolbox for many MIT departments, especially DMSE. Faculty and other researchers are excited for its completion slated for 2018. Krystyn Van…   more

Juejun Hu receives Coble Award

April 6, 2017

Professor Juejun Hu was the winner of the Coble Award 2017! This award honors the late Professor Coble, whose lifelong mission was to enhance the achievement and advancement of young ceramic scientists. From the ACerS website: The award recognizes an outstanding scientist who is…   more

Researchers “iron out” graphene’s wrinkles

April 5, 2017

Jeehwan Kim has a PNAS paper in which he confirms that a technique he previously developed does indeed create single domain graphene, meaning graphene that uniformly conducts electrons.…   more

DMSE Leads Largest Project in $35M Toyata Grant

April 4, 2017

"Three MIT-affiliated research teams will receive about $10M in funding as part of a $35M materials science discovery program launched by the Toyota Research Institute (TRI)." - MIT News Professors Jeffrey Grossman and Yang Shao-Horn will lead the largest funded project focused on the…   more

Stretching the boundaries of neural implants

March 31, 2017

New flexible fibers developed by Professor Polina Anikeeva and her research team are able to stimulate and monitor neurons in the spine without being invasive.  "Now, researchers have developed a rubber-like fiber that can flex and stretch while simultaneously delivering both optical…   more

Prof. Anikeeva joing panel on CrowdScience

March 24, 2017

Our own Professor Polina Anikeeva was recently on a panel for CrowdScience on the BBC World Service. This episode was about Science at the Movies. "Can we really live on Mars? Or exist in a virtual world? And why does movie science sometimes have us shouting at the screen? Our panel of…   more

Iodine may protect batteries

March 11, 2017

"Researchers at MIT and Carnegie Mellon University are studying a new kind of electrolyte for “self-healing” lithium battery cells, which will be formed by adding a halide element such as iodine, under a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The…   more

Roadmapping integrated photonics

March 11, 2017

AIM Photonics Institute, the MIT Microphotonics Center and iNEMI co-host the Spring meeting on the Integrated Photonics System Roadmap [IPSR], Tuesday through Thursday, March 28-30, 2017, at MIT. Session topics include Silicon Photonics and Moore’s Law; Human-Machine Interfaces; Automated…   more

Surfacing Solutions

March 10, 2017

"For Bilge Yildiz, Associate Professor of both materials science and engineering and nuclear science and engineering, unleashing novel properties in materials means taking a penetrating look at surfaces. Her work to understand and tailor surface chemistry sets the stage for a new generation of…   more

Conquering metal fatigue

March 10, 2017

"Metal fatigue can lead to abrupt and sometimes catastrophic failures in parts that undergo repeated loading, or stress. It’s a major cause of failure in structural components of everything from aircraft and spacecraft to bridges and powerplants. As a result, such structures are typically built…   more

Graphene sheets capture cells efficiently

March 9, 2017

"The material used in this research is an oxidized version of the two-dimensional form of pure carbon known as graphene, which has been the subject of widespread research for over a decade because of its unique mechanical and electrical characteristics. The key to the new process is heating the…   more

Precise technique tracks dopamine in the brain

March 9, 2017

"MIT researchers have devised a way to measure dopamine in the brain much more precisely than previously possible, which should allow scientists to gain insight into dopamine’s roles in learning, memory, and emotion. "Dopamine is one of the many neurotransmitters that neurons in the brain…   more