Northwestern Engineering

For decades, scientists studied materials by comparing before-and-after snapshots. Now, they can watch damage unfold in real time.

In a review article, Professor Horacio Espinosa describes how new techniques reveal how cracks form, strain builds, and materials ultimately fail—information that can help engineers design longer-lasting batteries, electronics, and more durable structures.

http://spr.ly/6180B8sJXq

The US is racing to produce more lithium for EVs and clean energy. But there’s a catch: water.

Professor Jennifer Dunn found most proposed lithium mining sites are in already dry regions, where water is limited and competition is high. Those shortages could worsen as climate change reshapes supply.

Northwestern Chemical & Biological Engineering Department

http://spr.ly/6188B8ULoM

Professor Shana Kelley helped lead the release of a new AI “world model” of protein biology at Biohub.

The system learns the rules that govern how proteins form, interact, and function — then uses that knowledge to predict structures and design new molecules.

Instead of testing ideas one experiment at a time, researchers can run those experiments digitally, speeding work on therapies and diagnostics.

http://spr.ly/6183B8USF9

Cars, smart devices, data centers, and agriculture all rely on minerals. And as demand grows, researchers are looking for better ways to find and produce them.

At Northwestern Engineering, that work includes everything from improving battery materials to exploring how minerals could be recovered from unexpected sources like lakes and waste streams.

The goal: expand supply while addressing the environmental and public-health concerns that often come with mining.

http://spr.ly/6183B8WD7f

Professor Ryan Truby was named to the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) Mechanical Engineering magazine Watch List, which recognizes 25 early-career engineers pursuing breakthroughs in their fields.

Truby leads the Robotic Matter Lab, where researchers are developing soft materials that enable robots to move, sense, and interact with their environments in new ways.

http://spr.ly/6180B8m2Jr

What does plant science look like in the age of AI? 🌿

This winter, Northwestern Engineering launched Data-Driven Plant Science, a new course co-developed by Professors Nivedita Arora and Susan Strickler bridges experimental biology with embedded sensing, bioinformatics, and machine learning. Through lectures and hands-on laboratories, students in the course learn to design experiments, collect and visualize sensor data (e.g. carbon dioxide, temperature, humidity) with an Arduino microcontroller, extract and process RNA, and apply computational methods.

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The Spring 2026 Northwestern Engineering Magazine is now online and arriving in mailboxes.

This new issue highlights diverse pathways to mineral acquisition, 10 years of the Center for Synthetic Biology, and the evolution of the McCormick curriculum.

https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/magazine/spring-2026/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-post&utm_campaign=mcc-news-promotion&utm_content=___

Northwestern Engineering students are turning big ideas into real-world impact—and winning big.

Trevor Abbott and Quinn McGinley, both mechanical engineering students, took home the VentureCat 2026 Grand Prize — $100,000 for their startup HaptE, a computer vision system that catches ex*****on errors and optimizes warehouse operations in real time.

Abbott and McGinley were far from the only McCormick School of Engineering students honored. Read on to find out who else was recognized.

https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2026/05/mccormick-student-entrepreneurs-win-venturecat-grand-prize/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-post&utm_campaign=mcc-news-promotion&utm_content=___

Post-disaster reconstruction is rapidly increasing global demand for construction materials, which drives unsustainable resource extraction, poor debris management, and heightened environmental and climate impacts. A research team including

Professors Emeritus Stephen Carr and William Miller, Professor Jennifer Dunn, and Adjunct Professor Andreas Waechter suggested the implementation of coordinated global policy reforms and circular construction strategies—especially debris reuse, supply-chain planning, and sustainable materials governance—to guide post-disaster rebuilding.

Without systemic changes, reconstruction will intensify ecological degradation and emissions, but with better policies it can instead become a lever for climate-aligned, more resilient infrastructure development.

https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2026/05/rethinking-disaster-recovery/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-post&utm_campaign=mcc-news-promotion&utm_content=___

“We’re about to witness the meteoric rise of materials discovery, and this is just the start.”

Traditional materials discovery is slow and inefficient, relying on sequential trial-and-error methods that make it difficult to rapidly identify and optimize materials with targeted properties. Professor Chad Mirkin demonstrated that the use of “megalibrary” platforms to synthesize and screen millions of material candidates in parallel enables rapid discovery and intentional design of materials with specific performance characteristics.

This approach could dramatically accelerate materials innovation while also generating large, high-quality datasets needed to train AI systems for future materials discovery.

https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2026/05/megalibraries-in-pole-position-for-autonomous-discovery-over-self-driving-labs/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-post&utm_campaign=mcc-news-promotion&utm_content=___