Sparking curiosity: Inside the 2026 GEMS Camp

For one week each summer, a group of high schoolers trades their normal routines for lab coats, two-part epoxy and shape memory alloys. The Get Excited About Materials Science (GEMS) camp, hosted July 26 to Aug. 1, 2026, by the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, gave rising sophomores, juniors and seniors a hands-on introduction to a field many of them have never heard of.

"Some students come in already knowing what materials science is, but the vast majority of the campers don't really know what it is," said Jessica Krogstad, an associate professor of materials science and engineering. "The goal is to give them confidence to select materials — or even engineering — as their desired major as they apply to colleges in the future."

Krogstad has been running the camp since she began taking part in 2015. She and her team have built the program around the "materials science tetrahedron," a framework meant to help campers see how the field's many branches connect to one another. This year, 13 graduate students and seven undergraduates helped deliver the program, with graduate coordinator Jahid Eamon keeping the week running smoothly.

Each day mixes short lectures with hands-on labs and time to prepare a design project. Activities have included growing single crystals, running X-ray diffraction demonstrations, fracturing blocks of cheese to study crack propagation, and building solar cells out of berry juice. 

Campers explored a variety of materials concepts through their activities, including but not limited to: 

• Casting small toys by sculpting a mold around a bath toy, letting it cure, then filling it with colored epoxy to take home.
• Clamping shape memory alloy wire into custom shapes, which graduate students heat-treated overnight, then deforming the wires and dropping them into hot water to watch them snap back into shape.
• Building bricks from plaster of paris reinforced with pipe cleaners, rubber bands, pennies, popsicle sticks and spaghetti. In 2026, two teams of campers maxed out the weight limit without breaking their bricks.

For rising senior Ciena Gilday of Barrington High School, a love of cars drew her to GEMS camp.

"Over the past year especially, I've become a very big Formula 1 enthusiast, and throughout my life I've been involved in the car hobby," she said. "The idea that materials science can take me there while also allowing me to get exposed to a lot of different things really intrigued me.

"I really enjoyed the castings that we did, especially with the little animals." 

For her design project, Gilday worked on a grease-absorbing sponge concept, reusable after a trip through the dishwasher.

Rising junior Gabriel De La Cruz Cresper came to GEMS through his interest in chemistry and math. 

"Materials science really put those two together, and that's why I participated here," he said.

Krogstad said the camp's design project is often the highlight, as campers apply what they've learned to problems from their own lives. The result of their projects was presented in a Friday poster session, held on the first floor of the Materials Science and Engineering Building at Illinois.  

“I’ve even had campers reach out to patent lawyers because they were so excited about their idea,” Krogstad said. “This is what I love, and it’s even better when I see these familiar faces in the materials department a few years later.” 

Illinois Grainger Engineering Affiliations

Jessica Krogstad is an Illinois Grainger Engineering associate professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. She is affiliated with the Materials Research Laboratory.