The Information Skunkworks

3/21/2023 | Dane Morgan and Paul Voyles (University of Wisconsin)

Translating Bioelectrochemical Engineering

2/3/2023 | Gregory Payne and William Bentley

Undergraduate Laboratory Experiment: Adsorption of Perfluoroalkyls in Metal Organic Frameworks

2/3/2023 | Omar Farha (Northwestern University)

A two-component undergraduate laboratory experience has been developed by students in a senior level capstone course.

Graduate Training in Machine Learning for Materials Design

10/1/2022

The DMREF research work, led by Dr. Nina Andrejevic, a female material scientist in Mingda Li’s group, was a critical component in Nina’s Doctoral Thesis, titled “Machine Learning-Augmented Spectroscopies for Intelligent Materials Design”. The thesis was subsequently selected and published by Springer as part of the Springer Theses series in 2022, in “Recognizing Outstanding PhD Research.”

Training Graduate Students in the Art of MOCVD

5/16/2022 | W. Lambrecht, K.Kash, H. Zhao

Graduate students Dinushi Jayatunga and Reza Karim collaborating on a growth sequence in the MOCVD instrument

A Physical Chemistry Lab Experiment Demonstrating Tunable Wettability

1/1/2022 | R. D. Davidson, T. E. O’Loughlin, T. E. G. Alivio, S.-M. Lim, and S. Banerjee

We recently designed a physical chemistry laboratory experiment that brings materials which were designed as part of our active research projects into the undergraduate laboratory curriculum.

AI/ML for Materials Design Workshop

1/1/2022 | Widener, A.

Over the course of our DMREF project, Banerjee  from Texas A&M Univ. (TAMU) and Watson from Univ. at Buffalo (UB) have mentored 10 URM undergraduate summer research interns from Univ. of Puerto Rico Cayey (UPRC), recruited from 4 materials workshops at UPRC led by Banerjee and featuring presentations from former DMREF interns.

Observation of Structural Phase Changes Driven by Electrostatic Gating

10/14/2021 | Evan J. Reed

Our efforts in data mining and machine learning have resulted in a number of new databases and predictions. These include: a database of over 1,000 2D materials that exist naturally as layered materials in the bulk (a), exploration of possible 2D materials that could be used in phase change applications, prediction of new superionic solid state Li-containing battery materials, and the creation of a website that allows researchers to easily search and predict the conductivity of solid-state electrolyte materials.

Engaging Underrepresented Undergraduate Students in Organic Semiconductor Research

7/1/2021 | K. J. Thorley, M. Benford, Y. Song, S. R. Parkin, C. Risko, and J. E. Anthony

Due to COVID restrictions, it was difficult to bring undergraduate researchers into our laboratory over the Summer of 2021. So instead, we reached out to local PUI Centre College in Danville, KY, and particularly Prof. Vanessa Song, a first-year professor at that institution.

Dynamic Control of Hierarchical Soft Materials via Molecular Design and 3-D Printing

10/19/2020

The grant has helped support an outreach program for high school girls of grades 9-12 co-organized by the Women in Engineering Program at University of Illinois. Over the past year, we added brand new activities introducing molecular assembly through fun exercises on liquid crystals, nucleation and growth, and shape memory alloys. Further, visiting students were excited to experience 3D printing of chocolate during our outreach program.