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Nancy Sottos and Jeffrey Moore earned the inaugural Discovery to Impact Award from the Illinois campus during Founders Week 2026 proceedings. The honor recognizes their innovations in the area of frontal polymerization.

Founder Professor Axel Hoffmann and colleagues at Argonne National Laboratory have demonstrated, for the first time, that spin waves in a thin film of epitaxial yttrium iron garnet (YIG) can be coupled to a superconducting resonator fabricated directly on top of it, creating a hybrid system that supports one-way propagation of signals. Overcoming a key materials challenge by switching to a substrate free of microwave-absorbing rare-earth metals, the team showed that this platform works, an important step toward integrating magnetic spins into compact, on-chip quantum information technologies.

An advanced material derived from coal could be the key to overcoming a major obstacle in next-generation microelectronics. Associate Professor Qing Cao and his team partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory to show that coal-derived carbon nanodots enable the growth of ultrathin insulating dielectric layers on the two-dimensional semiconductor molybdenum disulfide.

Professor Phil Geil passed away at the age of 95 in September 2026 following multiple health challenges. He was a foundational figure in polymer science and worked hard as a leader in Illinois materials science and engineering, serving as a champion for future generations of scientists. 

Purdue University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U. of I.) signed a memorandum of understanding on Friday (Sept. 18) to establish a joint semiconductor workforce development initiative to prepare students for careers in an industry whose rapid growth is being driven by the AI boom.

Two materials students experienced the journey of a lifetime when their Engineering Leadership Assistant class cohort made a trip to Peru. They build indoor stoves and helped with natural preservation efforts as part of global leadership training.