Imperfections: the Perfect Materials Platform Dan Gianola receives three awards for sustained contributions to the science of defects, materials characterization and the tools it requires. Research in Germany lies ahead. Some people seek perfection. UC Santa Barbara materials professor Daniel Gianola, recently received three... read more »

A doctoral student in the UC Santa Barbara Materials Department, Nicolas Fuchs-Lynch, has been selected for a significant research opportunity through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program. It provides graduate students with the opportunity to conduct part of... read more »

Mention data, and thoughts may turn immediately to the insatiable data needs of artificial intelligence. But AI and large language models are just one of the forces driving the need for — and generating — large volumes of data. Consider, for instance, the broad field of materials science. “At the end of the day, it’s the data that matters,” says UC Santa Barbara professor... read more »

Thanks to a new nonprofit — the Electrochemistry Foundry (ECF) — and construction begun under its auspices, UC Santa Barbara is poised to join a group of collaborating partners in a new era of battery prototyping. The effort is aimed at bridging the gap between innovative technology and commercial availability, thus securing the technological foundations of the modern... read more »

From UC Santa Barbara's The Current. UC Santa Barbara professor Shuji Nakamura has been selected as one of this year’s recipients for a prestigious honorary degree from the University of Oxford. The inventor of the blue LED, which ushered in a revolution in energy efficient lighting all over the world, Nakamura was a co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Prize... read more »

Anya Muligan, a graduate student in the Seshadri Group, was selected for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet and learn from a host of Nobel Laureates this summer in Germany. She is among 600 young scientists from throughout the world who will experience and contribute to the unique atmosphere of the 75th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. Anya’s participation is enabled... read more »

Don M. Lipkin was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2025, the first alumnus of the UCSB Materials Department to be so-recognized.  He is currently Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University, with a courtesy appointment in Aerospace Engineering. Lipkin did his doctoral research on metal-ceramic interfaces, working with... read more »

From UC Santa Barbara's The Current.   Research in the lab of UC Santa Barbara materials professor Stephen Wilson is focused on understanding the fundamental physics behind unusual states of matter and developing materials that can host the kinds of properties needed for quantum functionalities. In a paper published in the journal Nature Materials, Wilson... read more »

The UCSB Materials Department congratulates alumnus John L. Lyons, Ph.D. (’12), on his election as a 2025 Fellow of the American Physical Society, a prestigious honor awarded to fewer than 0.5% of members each year. Lyons, now a scientist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, is recognized for his fundamental contributions to the understanding and design of wide-band-gap... read more »

Congratulations to Shane Gallagher for receiving the award for Best Student Poster at the International ECI Conference on Ceramic Matrix Composites held in Yamanashi, Japan. (Shane is a student of Frank Zok).

Daniel Oropeza receives the Young Investigator Award from the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. UC Santa Barbara materials assistant professor Daniel Oropeza has been recognized with the 2025 Young Investigator Award from the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), the nation’s largest association supporting Hispanics in STEM. The award, part of SHPE’... read more »