News

  • Mar 7
    2024
    UC Santa Barbara materials professor Tresa Pollock has been honored by her peers with the 2024 William D. Nix Award from The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS), a testament to her impact on materials, on graduate students as an advisor, and on junior professionals in the field as a mentor. The prestigious annual award recognizes an individual whose work has... read more »
  • Feb 6
    2024
    Congratulations Professor Irene Beyerlein, Mehrabian Interdisciplinary Professor in the College of Engineering, for election to the National Academy of Engineering 2024 Class.  Here is the citation:   Beyerlein, Irene J., Mehrabian Interdisciplinary Professor, College of Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara. For methodologies predicting the mechanics of... read more »
  • Feb 6
    2024
    Materials faculty members Raphaële Clemént, Tresa Pollock, Angela Pitenis, Ananya Renuka Balakrishna, and Sriram Krishnamoorthy have received major instrumentation awards from the NSF, to continue maintaining and improving our world-class facilities. See the full story here. 
  • Feb 2
    2024
    The Materials Scientist Association (formerly known as the Materials Student Association) welcomes their newly elected leadership for 2024! President: Melina Endsley Secretary: Ashley Wissel-Garcia Treasurer: Kaitlyn Mullin GSA Representative: Nico Fuchs-Lynch First Year Representative: Rachel Kahler Social Committee Chair: Arturo Juan Professional Development Committee... read more »
  • Dec 14
    2023
    Professor Shuji Nakamura has received the 2023 LpS Digital Achievement Award from the LED professional Symposium, a large industrial consortium that supports LED research and applications. Prof. Nakamura was specifically recognized for "His impactful contributions to the energy and lighting sectors, his dedication to global sustainability, and his support for ongoing... read more »
  • Nov 28
    2023
    UCSB Materials Professor Chris Van de Walle has been awarded the 2023 Materials Theory Award from the Materials Research Society (MRS). The MRS is the leading professional society dedicated to advancing materials science. The society gives a single Theory Award each year, in recognition of “exceptional advances made by materials theory to the fundamental understanding of... read more »
  • Nov 1
    2023
    UCSB Materials welcomes Professor Jeff Sakamoto, who has been appointed as a Mehrabian Endowed Chancellor's Chair starting on November 1, 2023. Prof. Sakamoto’s research focuses on the area of functional ceramics. Ceramics are an important materials class ubiquitously found in a variety of applications, from high thermal barrier coatings, to thermoelectrics,... read more »
  • Oct 2
    2023
    The Materials Department is excited to welcome our incoming class of graduate students! The 13 students pictured are about to start on an exciting adventure of research and learning, and we hope we can help them achieve their scientific and career goals.    
  • Jun 30
    2023
    UC Santa Barbara’s Materials Research Laboratory (MRL) has received its seventh consecutive major grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund six years of operation as an NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC). Widely regarded as one of the top five materials research facilities in the world, the MRL, which obtained its first MRSEC... read more »
  • Jun 30
    2023
    UCSB Materials Professor Raphaële Clément has been awarded the 2023 Materials Today Rising Star Award and the ISE Prize for Electrochemical Materials Science. The MT energy Rising Star Award is awarded in recognition of the contributions of an early career scientist in energy materials. Professor Clément's contributions to the materials community by way of research and... read more »
  • Jun 12
    2023
    Robert McMeeking is a world-leading Scientist in the field of the Mechanics of Materials. He has made seminal contributions ranging from finite strain plasticity theory and its computational implementation within finite element codes to the coupling of solid mechanics and other physics in order to address a wide range of problems in engineering science. His work bridges... read more »
  • May 9
    2023
    Tresa Pollock, interim dean of UC Santa Barbara’s College of Engineering, has been recognized by her peers with the 2023 Acta Materialia Gold Medal, a top honor bestowed in recognition of the significant and lasting impact of her materials research and leadership in the field. Pollock, the Alcoa Distinguished Professor of Materials, is the first woman in the 50-year... read more »
  • May 2
    2023
    After decades nurturing future leaders in science and engineering, in 2010, Fiona Goodchild founded the Center for Science and Engineering Partnerships (CSEP) at UC Santa Barbara. The center in 2022 announced a new mentor leadership program and now, its first graduate fellow, Allison Chau, a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the Materials Department.   “A mentor opens... read more »
  • Mar 13
    2023
    Professor Levi, the Mehrabian Distinguished Professor of Materials and a distinguished professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UC Santa Barbara, was cited by NAE “for contributions to the understanding and development of high-temperature engineered surfaces and multilayers used in advanced gas turbine engines.” “It is uplifting to receive this honor from... read more »
  • Feb 1
    2023
    Congratulations to Professor Chris Palmstrøm on his election to the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the pinnacles of the profession. His indispensable expertise in using molecular beam epitaxy to control the growth and the interface structure and chemistry of dissimilar materials has led to the creation of many novel materials... read more »
  • Dec 12
    2022
      UCSB College of Engineering professor Steven DenBaars is among the 109 members from 24 countries who have been elected to the 2023 Fellow Class of Optica, the Society Advancing Optics and Photonics Worldwide, formerly known as the Optical Society (OSA). Fellows are selected based on several factors, including outstanding contributions to business, education, research,... read more »
  • Nov 9
    2022
    November 9, 2022 Forseeing Failure Researchers develop a way to predict the failure of solid metal materials from the first stage of cyclic stress (Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Take a wire paperclip. Now, bend it back and forth in the same spot 15, maybe 20 times. Chances are the paperclip will have broken before you finish. This is due to what’s called metal... read more »
  • Nov 1
    2022
    Two materials PhD students, Saurav Roy and Kira Wyckoff, have received Excellence in Research Graduate Fellowships from UC Santa Barbara’s Institute for Energy Efficiency (IEE), the College of Engineering’s interdisciplinary research center dedicated to cutting-edge science and technologies that support a more efficient and sustainable future. The award provides $22,500... read more »
  • Nov 1
    2022
    UCSB Materials welcomes Assistant Professor Ananya Renuka Balakrishna starting on November 1, 2022. Dr. Renuka Balakrishna’s research investigates the delicate interplay between atomic scale crystallographic changes and the continuum scale microstructural evolution that shapes physical properties of phase transformation materials. She develops and applies physics-based... read more »
  • Jul 20
    2022
    Functional materials, the kind that make up things like semiconductors, catalysts, photovoltaics, or batteries, don’t always arrive on schedule. In fact, they rarely do, according to a new paper in one of the inaugural issues of the journal Nature Synthesis. A funding agency can supply the dollars to conduct the research, and the research can get done, possibly creating a... read more »
  • Jul 20
    2022
    Chris Van de Walle, a distinguished professor in UC Santa Barbara’s Materials Department, has received a 2022 Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (VBFF) from the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), one of only nine such fellowships awarded this year. The five-year fellowship, considered the DoD’s most prestigious single-investigator award, is aimed at advancing transformative... read more »
  • Jul 19
    2022
    Materials Ph.D. Student Lauren Poole was recognized with an APS Early Career Speaker Award for her presentation at the 2022 Biennial APS meeting on Shock Compression of Condensed Matter. The meeting was held in Anaheim, CA from July 10 to July 15. Lauren’s talk was entitled “Dynamic mechanical behavior of co-continuous metal composites". Lauren is a PhD student in... read more »
  • Jul 19
    2022
    Arthur C. Gossard (1935-2022)  A Giant in Materials Science Has Died       UC Santa Barbara, the UCSB College of Engineering, and the materials science and engineering  world more broadly lost one of its giants with the passing of UCSB professor emeritus Arthur C.  Gossard, who died on June 26 in Santa Barbara. He is survived by his wife, Marsha, his  daughter, Sue, his... read more »
  • Jul 13
    2022
    UCSB Materials will welcome Assistant Professor Daniel Oropeza on July 1, 2023. Prof. Oropeza’s research explores new materials and manufacturing technologies, while mapping correlations between process parameters, material microstructure, and component properties. His research will couple fundamentals from material science and mechanical engineering, spanning the study... read more »
  • Jun 22
    2022
    Rachel Segalman, professor and chair of UC Santa Barbara’s Chemical Engineering Department, recently received a memorable phone call. The caller identification on her cellular phone read “DOE,” standing for the Department of Energy, which piqued the interest and nerves of the Edward Noble Kramer Professor. “I answered the call with trepidation, because I had a DOE... read more »