DMSE at MIT

Polymer Day 2026 brought together 82 teams from 18 schools for a poster competition showcasing research in sustainability and decarbonization, health care innovations, advanced manufacturing, and 3D printing.

Senior Nik Sandu combines research in earth sciences and magnetic materials with student teaching and community building. Through MIT’s STEP program, she's working toward her teaching license ahead of beginning a PhD at Dartmouth this fall. @MITEngineering buff.ly/s8eUu5t

Spotlighting DMSE Class of 2026 graduates.

Bilge Yildiz led an interdisciplinary team at MIT that demonstrates electrically controlled insertion of hydrogen can reversibly tune conductivity in monolayer MoS₂ ECRAM devices, pointing toward faster and more energy-efficient AI hardware. buff.ly/RaQcMJk

DMSE celebrates the Class of 2026.

Breakerspace Image Contest Winner: Best Electron Microscope Image Pria Sawhney captured shingle-like scales on a butterfly wing. Specimen preserves patterns reminiscent of shark denticles, highlighting structural similarities across species. View all: buff.ly/y1gtG1E

Breakerspace Image Contest Winner: Best Optical Microscope Image Kevin Shen’s silicon wafer displays geometric shapes that seem computer-generated. The image reflects ingenuity in fabricating and visualizing flawless structures at tiny scales. View all: buff.ly/y1gtG1E

How do birds display brilliant blues and shimmering iridescence without pigments? DMSE Prof. Lorna Gibson explains how microscopic structures in feathers produce vivid structural color. Watch the @mitopenlearning video: buff.ly/Y1vbTpV

Via Separations, a startup based on membrane technology developed by DMSE Prof. Jeffrey Grossman and MIT alum Shreya Dave, announced $36 million in new funding. Its technology can cut energy use in industrial processes by up to 90%. @mitenergy buff.ly/1AzFmiR

Researchers at @MIT, @ORNL, and other institutions have created a way to move tens of thousands of individual atoms within a material in minutes at room temperature. The approach could improve quantum computers and more. buff.ly/TcWzinD

The classic French pastry mille-feuille—that’s how Camille Cunin describes the polymer-metal “sandwiches” highlighted in her doctoral thesis—a key component in her bioelectronics research. buff.ly/T40kdg9

DMSE senior Jacqueline Prawira is featured in a new Deep Sea Reporter video about the biodegradable plastic she developed from fish scales in high school in California. Watch: buff.ly/DNT8Y39

Metals underpin much of materials science—and at MIT’s MetLab, researchers and students get hands-on experience with them every day. Watch: buff.ly/F7sVRHv

.@acspmse will honor Aristide Gumyusenge with the 2026 PMSE Early Investigator Award, recognizing his research on conductive polymers and hybrid materials for applications ranging from wearable electronics to chemical detection. dmse.mit.edu/news/aristide-…

Combining multislice electron ptychography and simulations, DMSE postdocs Michael Xu and Menglin Zhu refined 3D models of relaxor ferroelectrics—a key step toward better-designed electronic materials. buff.ly/OE5vcT9

DMSE PhD student Maggie Nelson has been awarded a 2026 MAD Design Fellowship. Her work explores how materials can shape human experience. buff.ly/vNtI6nU

Lorna Gibson’s upcoming book “Birds Up Close” offers an engineer’s view of birds’ remarkable abilities—from silent flight to structural color. Read more: buff.ly/EdUwK37

In this @MIT Wallin Group demo, light “writes” conductive pathways into a soft PIG gel. Move the beam, and the circuit rewires itself—lighting LEDs one by one. Read the @NatureComms paper: buff.ly/b0P15uG

Spring DMSE Frontiers is out! Yoel Fink receives the APS Sakharov Prize, Frances Ross joins the National Academy of Engineering, and Yet-Ming Chiang and colleagues uncover why cracks form in solid-state batteries. Read the latest from MIT DMSE: buff.ly/utzn4Tg

Students in Prof. Frances Ross’s 3.001 put a lesson on cement into practice, mixing and pouring it into molds in the Merton C. Flemings Materials Processing Laboratory (the forge and foundry).