Tackling grand challenges in the materials science of liquids and glasses and non-equilibrium magnetism.
In recognition of her work to literally put science in the hands of young people, Anne Lynn Gillian-Daniel has received a 2026 Bassam Z. Shakhashiri Public Science Engagement Award.This award, which is co-sponsored by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the Morgridge Institute for Research, and the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, honors Shakhashiri’s …
In January, Qiyuan Chen presented MRSEC-supported research at the 40th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-26) in Singapore. With a highly selective acceptance rate of 17.6% this year, AAAI remains one of the premier international venues for peer-reviewed research in artificial intelligence (AI). Chen’s presentation introduced a new physics-aware generative AI framework designed to decode the complex structure of disordered materials.
The Wisconsin MRSEC Advanced Materials Industrial Consortium (AMIC) seeks to provide companies with the materials, research, equipment, and talent they need. This year, the theme for the AMIC annual meeting was next-generation microelectronics. The workshop brought together nearly 150 attendees. It highlighted industrial trends and talent needs in presentations from Lockheed Martin, Intel, Eaton, Western Digital, Micron, Seagate, Polar Semiconductor, and Bolb, and MRSEC IRG 2 research relevant to magnetic data storage and quantum transduction in presentations by faculty and student posters. The event facilitated engagement between faculty, staff, students, and industry leaders, with the goals of fostering sponsored research, and opportunities for internships and employment.
Through our strong outreach partnerships, MRSEC faculty, students and staff bring cutting edge research concepts to the public through research-inspired and tested activities that spark curiosity and exploration, and occasionally a little get messy! Research teams discuss the synthesis, structure, and properties of materials, utilizing hands-on inquiry-based activities to engage the public and K-12 audiences.
At the end of October, students and postdocs joined in on the first listening session of the new MRSEC. The purpose of this meeting was to convey the Center’s resources for supporting students and postdocs and to gather feedback and suggestions from participants. MRSEC Director, Paul Voyles, kicked off the session with an overview of …
The Wisconsin MRSEC launched the Forward Fellows program in 2025 with 10 incoming graduate students from 9 departments. The program promotes students’ sense of self-efficacy in research and belonging at the university, and provides the opportunity for students to join the campus community and immerse themselves in research one month before their program’s official start date. Admitted students who would especially benefit from the experience were nominated by faculty in departments affiliated with the MRSEC.
Wisconsin MRSEC researchers investigated how metal ions of palladium and copper, stabilized in zeolites, rearrange when exposed to high temperatures or reactive environments. They used cutting-edge X-ray characterization to ‘see’ structural changes in real time. Metal ions rearrange when exposed to reactive environments and agglomerate into clusters over time, which no longer work as well. These clusters can be returned active catalysts through controlled high-temperature treatments. These insights inform the design of efficient catalysts for energy applications.
Researchers in the Wisconsin MRSEC have shown that bilayer electron crystals exhibit a variety of magnetic states depending on the distance between the two layers and the number of electrons in each layer. These state include ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic arrangements of electron spins, as well as exotic states like the valence-bond solid and spin-nematic. These results establish bilayer crystals as a promising platform for studying quantum magnetism and provide guidance for experiments characterizing electron solids realized in 2D materials.
Wisconsin MRSEC researchers have demonstrated that strain can dramatically alter the magnetoelastic properties of a two-dimensional material, CrSBr. Magnetoelasticity is the interaction between magnetism and strain. The researchers developed a nanoscale mechanical resonator device to measure the material’s magnetoelastic coupling. Using it, they showed that 2D CrSBr has a particularly large coupling, and that it can be tuned by 50% by stretching the 2D membrane.
Researchers in the Wisconsin MRSEC have developed a nanomechanical resonator device to measure strain in thin membranes. It uses laser interferometry to measure how much the membrane moves when it vibrates, then scans the vibration frequency to find the largest response, called resonance. This new method can measure changes in the membrane size as small as 0.01%.