Annual Report 2016-17

Annual Report 2016-17

Fast Facts

Michele Marcolongo — Learn More

Highlights

Drexel Materials Faculty and Staff
Excellence in Scholarship: 2017 Graduates
Alumni Impact
Materials in Action
Faculty Awards and Achievements
Student Awards and Achievements
Major Research Initiatives and Activities
Special Highlights

Faculty & Staff

Gogotsi receiving Charles T. and Ruth M. Bach Professorship — Yury Gogotsi, PhD was installed as the inaugural Charles T. and Ruth M. Bach Professor. The professorship was established with a permanent endowment of $2.2 million that will be used to fund Gogotsi’s research initiatives.
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Caroline Schauer and Mitra Taheri — Associate Professors Caroline Schauer and Mitra Taheri have been selected to take part in the Executive Leadership in Academic Technology and Engineering (ELATE) leadership development program.
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Excellence in Scholarship: 2017 Graduation

2017 graduating undergraduate students — The department bid farewell to its graduating students at our annual commencement dinner. Faculty, staff, and students receiving departmental awards were also honored.
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Katie Van Aken and Evelyn Ren — Graduating PhD students Katie Van Aken and Chang (Evelyn) Ren are recipients of college-level graduate student excellence awards.
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Alumni Impact

Prineha Narang — Alumna Prineha Narang (BS ‘11) has been appointed Assistant Professor of Computational Materials Science at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University.
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Davide Mattia — Alumnus Davide Mattia (PhD 2008) has been promoted to Full Professor and Associate Dean for Research in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Bath, UK.
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Michael Naguib — Alumnus Michael Naguib (PhD 2014) will be joining Tulane University in January 2018 as assistant professor in the department of Physics and Engineering Physics.
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Nina Lane — The Drexel Alumni Association Young Alumni Emerging Leader Award is presented to an individual who is making an impact within his or her community or in his or her profession since graduation.
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awards — Three Drexel Materials PhD graduates and one former post-doctoral researcher have recently received acknowledgement of their accomplishments in the field.
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Materials in Action

Drexel nanomaterials researchers in a South Korean lab. — A group of students and post-doctoral researchers spent the summer in South Korea as the first cohort to participate in a collaboration between Drexel University, the National Nanofabrication Center (NNFC) and the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).
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2D Materials Graphic — Interest in two-dimensional (2D) materials for energy technology, with the potential to positively impact efficiency and environmental sustainability, is rapidly growing. Drexel University and, in particular, the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, is a hub for research into possible advances in 2D materials for energy.
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Jessica Weaver in the lab — Drexel Materials has undergone research facilities expansion this academic year, especially in the areas of energy and polymers.
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Faculty Awards & Achievements

Dr. Michel Barsoum being greeted by His Royal Highness Prince Carl Philip of Sweden, Duke of Värmland — At its November 17th meeting, the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences elected Drexel Materials Distinguished Professor Michel Barsoum as a Foreign Member.
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Jonathon Spanier — Professor Jon Spanier has been elected Fellow of the American Physical Society.
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Pomerantseva Energy Technologies Award — Assistant Professor Ekaterina Pomerantseva is the recipient of the International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM) Energy Technologies Award (ETA), presented for notable and outstanding research in the field of smart energy technologies.
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Yury Gogotsi — Distinguished University and Trustee Chair Professor Yury Gogotsi has been selected as a 2016 Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics.
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Michel Barsoum — Distinguished Professor Michel Barsoum has been selected for a Chair of Excellence in Grenoble, France by the Nanosciences Foundation.
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Li receiving alumni award — Christopher Li received the Distinguished Alumni Award at the College’s Polymer Appreciation Day, a one day symposium celebrating the outstanding achievements of the college’s alumni and students.
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May with his Provost Award for Outstanding Scholarly Productivity — Associate Professor Steven May is a recipient of the Provost Award for Outstanding Scholarly Productivity, Early Career, which recognizes up faculty members who have demonstrated unusual excellence in their scholarly field and who are considered emerging leaders in these fields.
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Christopher Li, Andrew Magenau, and Steven May — Three Drexel Materials faculty members are recipients of the Office of Research's inaugural Scholarly Materials and Equipment Research Award which provide faculty the opportunity to apply for funds for the acquisition and/or development of equipment, software, systems, or library collections.
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Gogosti receiving the NMS award — Gogotsi received the award "For outstanding contributions to the field of carbide derived carbons, carbon onions and nanodiamonds for capacitive energy storage and biomedical applications.”
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Student Awards & Achievements

Ariana Levitt and Carli Moorehead — PhD student Ariana Levitt and BS/MS student Carli Moorehead (BS Biomedical Engineering, MS Drexel Materials) are two of four current Drexel University students selected as 2017 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellows.
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Carli Moorehead — BS/MS student Carli Moorehead (BS Biomedical Engineering, MS Drexel Materials) has received a Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant from the U.S. Department of State.
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Riki McDaniel and Marina D'Souza — Drexel Materials sophomores Riki McDaniel and Marina D’Souza have been selected to be Pennoni Honors College 2016-17 Aspire Scholars. The Aspire Scholars program is designed to provide promising, curious, and motivated Drexel undergraduates an opportunity to further develop and clarify their goals, within a small community of peers and faculty mentors.

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Materials students on winning freshman design team — At the annual Celebration of Engineering Design Day, a freshman design team comprised of three materials majors: Mark Petrovic, Kirsten Snodgrass, and Anna Desch, along with Jean-Luc Cassagnol and Mika Away, won Best of Freshman Design for their poster.
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Major Research Initiatives

MXene Electrode — Can you imagine fully charging your cell phone in just a few seconds? Drexel Materials researchers can, and they took a big step toward making it a reality with their recent work unveiling a new MXene based battery electrode design in the journal Nature Energy.
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ripplocation — New findings from Drexel Materials researchers suggest that, when compressed, layered materials will form a series of internal buckles, or ripples, as they deform, vastly expanding our understanding of how layered materials succumb to stresses and strains.
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light in ferroelectric insulator — Recent work from the Mesoscale Materials Laboratory shows how light can transform a ferroelectric insulator into a high-mobility electronic conductor, remarkably, at room temperature.
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It’s been just over five years since Drexel Materials researchers reported on MXene, a new 2D material now the focus of research at dozens of institutions from countries spanning every continent but Antarctica. A feature story on the cover of Nature Reviews Materials suggests even more should take up the pursuit.
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Hao Cheng — Assistant Professor Hao Cheng has been awarded an R21 grant by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health to study injectable biomaterial scaffolds for inducing antigen-specific tolerance to treat autoimmune disorders.
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Antonio Zavaliangos — Research by A. W. Grosvenor Professor Antonios Zavaliangos has been selected to be featured in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences virtual issue “Most Original and Most Significant Scientific Findings.”
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MXene film — MXene, a nanomaterial discovered by Drexel Materials scientists, could be the key to shielding electronic devices from electromagnetic interference, like a television buzzing when a cell phone is near.
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bulk photovoltaic effect — Designers of solar cells may soon be setting their sights higher, as a discovery by a team of researchers, which includes Drexel Materials Professor Jonathan Spanier, has revealed a class of materials that could be better at converting sunlight into energy than those currently being used in solar arrays.
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cross section of crystalsome — Professor Christopher Li is the principal investigator on a new National Science Foundation grant, “Confined and Directed Polymer Crystallization at Curved Liquid/Liquid Interface.” Li's recent findings on crystallization were reported in Nature Communications last year.
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Nature Energy Perspective Figure — Professors Ekaterina Pomerantseva and Gogotsi posit that next-generation batteries created by combining different two-dimensional (2D) materials in heterostructured electrodes can greatly improve battery life and charge storage capabilities.
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Conceptual presentation of development of fully integrated rechargeable hybrid battery-supercapacitor (supercapbattery) electrical energy storage devices — In a recent edition of Nature Communications, Drexel Materials researchers offer a unified route for bringing our energy storage and distribution capabilities level with our energy production and consumption.
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Special Highlights

Dee Breger — Drexel Materials remembers former Director of Microscopy Dee Breger.
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