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Department Head Nancy Sottos, alongside colleagues from across The Grainger College of Engineering, is contributing to a DARPA-sponsored initiative aiming to  demonstrate the first true in-space composite materials manufacturing system, with a demonstration scheduled to launch to the International Space Station in late June 2026. Sottos's work focuses on the chemical stability and shelf life of the self-polymerizing resins central to the technology, which could revolutionize space construction by allowing raw materials to be launched compactly and manufactured into structures on orbit.

Li's unanimous selection for the 2026 Victor K. LaMer Award from the American Chemical Society recognizes her work engineering nanoparticles that self-organize into precise three-dimensional arrangements, called superlattices, which can be designed to interact with light in controllable ways — with potential applications in biosensing, light-based computing and next-generation photonic devices.

Allison Lau is the sole representative of the Illinois materials department among the 2026 Knights of St. Patrick honorees in The Grainger College of Engineering. Lau displays the exceptional leadership and character this award embodies, having served as a director of the ESTAR program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Assistant Professor Chris Anderson's research on optically active spin qubits — quantum building blocks that interact with light — has been selected as the cover story of MRS Bulletin, the flagship publication of the Materials Research Society. His work establishes critical guidelines for designing the next generation of quantum materials, including a new "periodic table of quantum coherence" that serves as the field's first universal cookbook for building robust qubits for applications in quantum sensing, computing and communications.

Undergraduate and graduate students of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering , along with three esteemed alumnae, gathered in April 2026 for a night of celebration and honors. The event took place at the 

Associate Professor Hua Wang and his team have developed a novel mRNA cancer vaccine platform using a self-adjuvanting α-helical polypeptide that simultaneously delivers tumor-targeting mRNA into dendritic cells and activates them — achieving 83.3% tumor-free survival in a mouse lymphoma model, compared to 0% with previous mRNA vaccines. The platform, published in PNAS, offers a promising new direction for mRNA cancer vaccines beyond their current limitations.