Annual Report 2014-15

Annual Report 2014-15

Fast Facts

Michele Marcolongo — Learn More

Highlights

Drexel Materials Faculty and Staff
Excellence in Scholarship: 2015 Graduates
Alumni Impact
Materials in Action
Faculty Awards and Achievements
Student Awards and Achievements
Major Research Initiatives and Activities
Special Highlights

Faculty & Staff

Andrew Magenau — Dr. Magenau’s research group at Drexel University will be focused on developing innovative polymerization platforms that generate functional soft materials addressing needs at the interface of chemistry, biology, and materials science.

Maher Harb — Dr. Maher Harb will join the department in September 2015 as Assistant Professor under a joint appointment to the Drexel Physics and Materials departments.

Steven May — Dr. Steven May has received tenure and been promoted to associate professor as of September 1, 2015.

Danielle Kopicko — Drexel Materials welcomes back Danielle T. Kopicko, who rejoined the staff in February 2015 as Associate Director of the A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute.

Excellence in Scholarship: 2015 Graduation

2015 Commencement — The department bid farewell to its graduating students at a reception for PhD graduates and at our annual commencement dinner. Faculty, staff, and students receiving 2014-2015 departmental awards were also honored.

Kristy Jost — Six Drexel Materials students have been recognized with end of year honors from the Office of Graduate Studies.

Alumni Impact

Benson, Vakharia, and Jost — Materials alumni find a variety of ways to fuse the arts and technology to suit their own career paths.

Alumni Association Award winners — Dr. Ronald (Ron) W. Smith, PhD Materials ’85, PhD student Katie Van Aken, and BS/MS student Ziyin Huang were all honored by the Drexel University Alumni Association for their achievements and service.

Dr. William E. Frazier — Alumnus Dr. William E. Frazier has been elected Vice President of the Board of Trustees of ASM International.

Howard Benson — Alumnus Howard Benson, BS ’80, is the recipient of a Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, from Drexel’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design.

Materials in Action

quantum dots 2 — Professors Wei-Heng Shih and Wan Shih are turning fluorescent nanocrystals, called quantum dots, into a dye that binds to cancer cells to improve cancer surgery outcomes.

Marcolongo and Shih — Faculty members Michele Marcolongo and Wei-Heng Shih discuss their start-up companies developing innovations in health care.

Faculty Awards & Achievements

Chris Li — Professor Christopher Li has been selected as the North American Thermal Analysis Society (NATAS) Fellow for 2014.

Steven May — Assistant Professor Steven May is the recipient of the 2015 ASM International Bradley Stoughton Award for Young Teachers.

Richard Knight — Professor Rick Knight has been awarded the 2015 Meritorious Service Award from the Liberty Bell Chapter of ASM International.

Gogotsi giving Doctor Honoris Causa Speech — Distinguished University and Trustee Chair Professor Yury Gogotsi received a Doctor Honoris Causa from Université Paul Sabatier.

Student Awards & Achievements

Kelsey Hatzell — PhD students Kelsey Hatzell and Maria Lukatskaya, both advised by Yury Gogotsi, are each recipients of prestigious post-doctoral fellowships at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory respectively.

Boris Dyatkin — PhD student Boris Dyatkin is the recipient of a National Research Council Research Associateship Program (NRC RAP) post-doctoral fellowship.

Michael Ghidiu — PhD student Michael Ghidiu is a recipient of the 2015 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. PhD students Bryan Byles and Sarah Gleeson have both received Honorable Mention.

Brittany Gallagher — BS students Brittany Gallagher and Ziyin Huang are recipients of Tau Beta Pi Scholarships for the 2014-15 academic year.

Maria Lukatskaya — PhD student Maria Lukatskaya is a recipient of an MRS Gold Graduate Student Award.

Boris Dyatkin — PhD candidate Boris Dyatkin has received a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research award for the project, “In situ Neutron Scattering Study of the Impact of Surface Defects on Double Layer Capacitance of Porous Carbon.”

Chris DelRe — BS/MS student Christopher DelRe is a recipient of the inaugural Alpha Sigma Mu Harry C. Rogers Scholarship presented by the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Alpha Sigma Mu.

Kelsey Hatzell — PhD candidate Kelsey Hatzell received the MRS Graduate Student Silver Award and the the Arthur Nowick Graduate Student Award at the 2014 MRS Fall Meeting in Boston.

Major Research Initiatives

Interface illustration — A team of researchers, led by Professor Mitra Taheri, has published their latest research on the materials used in spintronic data storage in Nature Communications.

MXene clay — A Drexel Materials research group has published their research on “conductive MXene clay” in Nature. The clay can be rolled to any thickness, while retaining its highly conductive properties. This new material could find uses in energy storage devices like batteries and supercapacitors.

Researchers have chemically engineered a new, electrically conductive nanomaterial that is flexible enough to fold, but strong enough to support many times its own weight.

capacitive yarn for energy storage textiles — Drexel Materials research on capacitive yarn has been featured on the cover of Advanced Energy Materials.

Professor Yury Gogotsi and his research group and colleagues at Aix-Marseille University have created for the first time a 2D carbon/sulfur, C/S, nanolaminate through selectively extracting titanium (Ti) from Ti2SC MAX phase, one of a family of layered ceramics.

Chris Li — Professor Christopher Li has been awarded a three-year National Science Foundation grant for “UNS: Ion transport in semicrystalline solid polymer electrolytes.”

G Tucker — Professor Garritt Tucker has been awarded a National Science Foundation Division of Materials Research grant that will be conducted in collaboration with Professor Jason Trelewicz at Stony Brook University.

Professor Christopher Li has been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation for his project "Self and Programmable Assembly of Nanoparticles with Multicompartment Polymer Brushes."

Special Highlights

Professor Christopher Weyant teaching — Professor Christopher Weyant has been transforming engineering education and outreach in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering since he joined the department three years ago.

Philly Materials Day - 2015 — On Saturday, February 7, 2015, approximately 1,300 kids and adults came out to experience the field of materials science and engineering first-hand at the fifth annual Philly Materials Science and Engineering Day.

department t-shirt — This year, Drexel Materials students highlighted the witty side of materials with winning t-shirt designs.