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The Department of Materials Science and Engineering is seeking two open-rank, tenure-track faculty members in data-driven, theoretical and computational materials science, with one position focused on soft materials and the other on hard materials. 


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Materials Engineers at Work

Every industry breakthrough starts here. See how our engineers are designing impactful solutions.

Krogstad study on electron diffuse scattering earns Editors' Suggestion placement

Associate Professor Jessica Krogstad and co-authors had their paper named an Editors’ Suggestion by Physical Review Materials. The study ties the characteristic thermal diffuse-scattering features in FCC metals to specific low-frequency lattice vibrations, then uses that understanding to propose measurement strategies, such as choosing particular crystal orientations, that separate thermal effects from the signal of chemical short-range order in complex alloys like stainless steels and high entropy alloys.

Alumna Jennifer Lewis elected to third national academy, achieving rare distinction

Jennifer Lewis, a 1986 Illinois ceramics engineering graduate, has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine as a result of her impactful healthcare research, which has been focused on 3D bioprinting of soft and living materials. 

Qian Chen named next MRL director

The Grainger College of Engineering announced Thursday that Qian Chen, professor and Racheff Faculty Scholar, will be the next director of the Materials Research Laboratory, effective November 1.

Anderson named 2026 Packard Fellow 

Assistant Professor Chris Anderson has been named a 2026 Packard Fellow for Science and Engineering, one of 20 early-career researchers nationwide chosen by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to receive $985,834 in unrestricted funds over five years. Anderson, the first Illinois Grainger Engineering faculty member to receive the honor since Professor Pinshane Huang in 2017, will use the funding to advance his group's work on materials that control light and quantum information.

Sottos, Moore earn inaugural campus Discovery to Impact Award

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.

From spin wave to superconducting circuit: a one-way street for quantum information

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.

 

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