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Professor and Racheff Faculty Scholar Cecilia Leal was recently featured on The Academic Minute, a daily audio module airing on 70 stations across the United States and Canada, where she discussed her lab's discovery that fat cells undergo sophisticated internal transformations at the molecular level during obesity. The research, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, reveals that fat molecules reorganize into tightly packed crystalline structures during caloric overload, challenging conventional views of obesity and opening new avenues for therapeutic approaches.

Professor and Racheff Faculty Scholar Pinshane Huang has achieved one of Physics World magazine's Top 10 Breakthroughs of the Year for 2025 for capturing the highest-resolution images ever taken of individual atoms. Using electron ptychography, Huang's team achieved an unprecedented resolution of 15 picometers and became the first to directly visualize moiré phasons—collective vibrations in twisted 2D materials that had only existed in theory. 

Associate Professor Nicola H. Perry has been awarded an American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund New Directions Grant for her project on accelerating materials design for intermediate-temperature CO₂ capture and valorization through a combinatorial thin film kinetics platform. The research addresses a critical climate challenge by developing ceramic materials that capture and transform CO₂ emissions into value-added chemicals without costly precious metal catalysts. This latest award builds on Perry's sustainability-focused research portfolio, including a 2023 ACS Principal Investigator Development in Sustainability Grant.

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering partnered with SEMI Midwest Chapter to host a Professional Development Seminar featuring industry experts from across the semiconductor industry. An "Ask Me Anything" panel emphasized the importance of soft skills like communication and teamwork, encouraged students to embrace curiosity and ask questions, and highlighted the growing career opportunities in semiconductors—with nearly 115,000 new U.S. jobs expected by 2030. 

Cunjiang Yu, who is affiliated with the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, developed "rubbery CMOS"—fully stretchable electronic circuits that match the functionality of conventional rigid electronics but can stretch up to 50 percent without losing performance. Unlike previous hybrid approaches, these circuits use entirely elastic materials throughout, achieving true complementary behavior with both p-type and n-type transistors for the first time in rubber electronics. 

The Grainger College of Engineering has launched the Center for In-Space Manufacturing of Resilient Structures (SpaceMaRS) to advance the manufacturing and assembly of large composite structures directly in orbit. Materials Science and Engineering Professor Nancy Sottos is among eight faculty members collaborating on the center, which builds on DARPA and Air Force-funded research to develop resilient space structures that can withstand harsh orbital conditions including micrometeoroid impacts and atomic oxygen erosion.