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Professor and Racheff Faculty Scholar Cecilia Leal is contributing her expertise in biomembrane structure and characterization to a $2 million NSF project led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The research aims to revolutionize separation membrane manufacturing. The interdisciplinary collaboration seeks to replace the decades-old toxic chemical process with biology-inspired membranes that mimic how human cells naturally filter molecules. Leal's work is critical to replicating the structural complexity that makes biomembranes so effective at selective transport, with potential applications in water purification, desalination and pharmaceutical manufacturing.

Researchers, led by Assistant Professor Yuecheng "Peter" Zhou during his postdoctoral work at Stanford University, demonstrated how to optimize electrochromic polymers — materials that change color in response to voltage — as non-invasive sensors for recording electrical activity in biological systems. By tailoring the polymer chemistry to specific systems like cardiac tissue and neurons, the team achieved sensitivity matching conventional electrode sensors without damaging cells. Zhou  is continuing to develop these polymer-based recording methods for practical use in biological research.

Assistant Professor Chris Anderson has received a DARPA Young Faculty Award for developing strontium titanate optical modulators that could solve quantum computing's major scaling problem. His breakthrough replaces heat-generating electrical wires with ultra-thin optical fibers, potentially enabling the million-qubit quantum computers needed for practical applications. The technology offers 400 times better performance while generating orders of magnitude less heat than current systems.

Rose Castanares, a 1988 graduate of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and current present of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) Arizona,  returned to Illinois in September to share her career journey in the semiconductor industry. She talked about her excitement for the company's aggressive expansion plans in the United States and shared valuable advice for students interested in pursuing a career in this thriving field.

Professor Paul Braun and additional researchers have developed a revolutionary single-step battery recycling method that extracts valuable metals from old cathodes and deposits them onto new ones in one electrochemical process. The breakthrough is one-eighth as costly and over 50% less environmentally harmful than current multi-stage recycling methods.

Assistant Professor Chris Anderson was recently selected as the only Illinois representative among 74 outstanding early-career engineers for the prestigious 2025 Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering Symposium. Anderson was chosen for his groundbreaking work on quantum computing systems and participated in  the Sept. 14-17 symposium, organized by the National Academy of Engineering.