Michigan Engineering

NEW ARTICLE: “U-Michigan offers new online engineering master’s program with a focus on data and decision analytics” New master’s program can be done online with ‘no career breaks, no commute, no compromise. news.engin.umich.edu/2026/05/u-mich…

NEW ARTICLE: “UK’s Royal Society elects Stephen Forrest, engineer and entrepreneur.” Forrest’s work underpins commercial fiber-optic communications and OLED displays, with an eye to future generations of photovoltaics. news.engin.umich.edu/2026/05/uks-ro…

NEW: “Complexity isn’t subjective. The right amount results in new nanomaterial properties.” Graph theory can quantify complexity, defined as a mix of order and disorder. Nanoparticle structures with the optimal ratio have new or enhanced capabilities. news.engin.umich.edu/2026/05/comple…

NEW: “Key structures to metallic glass stability revealed with machine learning.” Using the second-nearest neighboring atoms to predict metallic glass stability can help researchers more accurately model the disordered solid with strong, elastic properties.news.engin.umich.edu/2026/05/key-st…

NEW ARTICLE: “Better helium reporting to improve fission and fusion materials modeling.” Helium generation predictions vary by as much as 200%, a new standardized reporting method can help move the field forward. news.engin.umich.edu/2026/05/better…

NEW ARTICLE: “Robots and AI to help shipbuilding stay on track.” American and Japanese researchers will develop robots and AI to help shipbuilders pivot when the built ship deviates from the planned design. news.engin.umich.edu/2026/05/robots…

NEW ARTICLE: “Modeling particles reveals soil density impact on surface fault ruptures.” The discrete element method models tens of millions of distinct particles to help understand this rare earthquake hazard and inform resilient civil engineering design. news.engin.umich.edu/2026/05/modeli…

NEW ARTICLE: “Quantum metallurgy: electron crystals deform and melt” Electrons can arrange into crystalline patterns that accumulate defects as they melt. Controlling the degree of melting may advance superconductors and artificial neurons. news.engin.umich.edu/2026/05/quantu…

NEW ARTICLE: “Death-defying protein found in tardigrades preserves synthetic cells.” The findings could help make synthetic cells easier and cheaper to store and transport, for point-of-use production of medicines and other useful molecules. news.engin.umich.edu/2026/05/death-…

We’re excited to announce Michigan Engineering’s incoming dean, Mingyan Liu. Currently serving as our Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and previously as chair of ECE, Liu is internationally recognized for her research, which has increasingly focused on cybersecurity.

NEW: “Stem cell model of human embryo produces yolk sac without hypoblasts or genetic trickery.” The model demonstrates never-before-seen potential in human pluripotent stem cells and is a step toward stem cell models that can shed light on infertility. news.engin.umich.edu/2026/04/stem-c…

NEW ARTICLE: “AI helps instructors give better feedback but can’t replace them.” A randomized trial in a large economics course found that AI-mediated feedback improved students’ revisions when teaching assistants stayed in control. news.engin.umich.edu/2026/04/ai-hel…

NEW ARTICLE: “Global urban methane emissions are growing more than estimated.” Satellite measurements suggest that scientific and government reports don’t capture how methane emissions are rising, which could hamper mitigation efforts. news.engin.umich.edu/2026/04/global…

NEW ARTICLE: “Ultrashort laser pulses achieve stronger photoemission.” A new theoretical study finds shorter laser pulses achieve higher quantum efficiency for photoemission from a solid surface without increasing power or intensity. news.engin.umich.edu/2026/04/ultras…

An update from University of Michigan Board of Regents Chair Mark J. Bernstein about the presidential transition.

NEW ARTICLE: “Providing the Artemis mission with solar radiation forecasts.” Machine-learning and physics-based models developed at U-M will warn NASA when solar particle radiation could become hazardous up to 24 hours in advance. news.engin.umich.edu/2026/04/provid… Image credits: @NASA

A $40M Great Lakes partnership is working to strengthen the nuclear workforce. @umichNERS is helping expand training and workforce pathways. Read more: ners.engin.umich.edu/2026/04/10/ner…

NEW ARTICLE: “A fast method for measuring how well air disinfection works: see how it glows.” Developed to measure the effectiveness of plasma-based air disinfection, the approach could eventually assess other techniques as well. news.engin.umich.edu/2026/04/a-fast…

NEW ARTICLE: “A hardware-software co-design to efficiently run AI on edge devices.” Adjusting state space models to work with a compute-in-memory architecture demonstrated energy-efficient processing of continuous event sequences. news.engin.umich.edu/2026/04/a-hard…

NEW ARTICLE: “Fine-tuning nanoscale heat flows in molecular materials.” Researchers demonstrate how swapping out a single atom can cut the thermal conductance in half without changing electrical properties. news.engin.umich.edu/2026/04/fine-t…