Materials Science & Engineering

The National Science Foundation has awarded Professor Christopher Li a three-year grant to advance his research on crystalsomes. Li and members of his Soft Materials Group first reported their discovery of crystalsomes a decade ago, when they were able to coax polymer crystals to take on a spherical shape rather than the rigid structure we are used to seeing in crystal formations.

Similar to liposomes, the tiny artificial bubbles made of fat that are used as biological packages for delivering drug treatments, Li has demonstrated that crystalsomes are more effective at making the delivery than their namesake, because crystals hold up better both on the way into and within the body. With this latest grant from NSF, Li will explore how to build their curved, responsive walls without help from an outside template.

Congratulations to Jill Wenderott, Anne Stevens Assistant Professor of Materials Science & Engineering, who has received an NSF CAREER award for her research into developing new ceramic materials that can use visible light to drive chemical reactions.

The NSF CAREER award is one of the nation’s most prestigious honors for early-career faculty, recognizing outstanding potential in research. Jill’s work could pave the way for more efficient creation of useful, value-added products while supporting cleaner, more sustainable technologies.

We look forward to seeing how her research continues to advance sustainable materials manufacturing!

They did it! 🥹Congratulations to an outstanding group of graduates. We're especially proud of the College of Engineering undergraduate commencement speaker, our very own Alessandra Cabrera. An amazing day celebrating remarkable achievements. Soar high, Dragons! 🐉💙💛

It was game on in the department this Wednesday for our 2nd annual MSE wiffle ball competition between students and faculty & staff! The bats were on fire and the competition was fierce, but in the end, faculty & staff held onto their title with a 12–10 victory. Thank you to everyone who participated and cheered from the sidelines!

We celebrated graduating MSE students and department award winners on Monday, and look forward to honoring our graduates again tomorrow morning at the College of Engineering commencement ceremony!

2026 department award winners:

Outstanding Research: Yury Gogotsi
Outstanding Service: Jill Wenderott
Outstanding Teaching: Steve May
Outstanding Staff: Sarit Kunz
Outstanding Graduate Student: Mohamed Ibrahim, Teng Zhang and Leo Zhang
Outstanding Undergraduate Student: Alessandra Cabrera and Hans Geiser

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering had plenty to celebrate at Drexel Engineering's Celebration of Engineering!

🏆 Senior Design Championship Competition (2nd Place)
Alessandra Cabrera, Evelyn Carpenter, and Lucy Plant for Photothermal Desalination for Efficient, Energy-Cheap Freshwater Production

🥇 Senior Design General Competition (1st Place)
Sarah Cassidy, Joe Heston, and Conway Zheng for Poly-L-Lactic Acid Crystalsomes Formed in Environmentally Sustainable Nanoemulsions for Biomedical Applications

MSE students in attendance who received prestigious Drexel Engineering awards, fellowships, and national honors were also recognized at the event:

⭐ Alessandra Cabrera – Fulbright U.S. Student Award & Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award
⭐ Leo Zhang – Outstanding Graduate Student Award
⭐ Carl Furner – Koerner Family Award
⭐ Yash Athreya – Joseph and Shirley Carleone Endowed Fellowship
⭐ Yuanren Liu – Joseph and Shirley Carleone Endowed Fellowship
⭐ Shichen Yu – Paul Lemmo Award

Congratulations to all of our students on an outstanding year of innovation, research, and achievement!

How do you take the last department coffee hour of the spring term up a notch? 🍋☀️ With a lemonade bar, of course!

A special thank you to Prof. Jill Wenderott for organizing our regular coffee hours throughout the year and making our sense of community within the department even stronger. 😊

Cheers to a successful spring term and to the connections we've made along the way! 💛💙

Kudos to Materials Science & Engineering senior Talia Spolansky for returning to her alma mater, Abington High School, to introduce chemistry and physics students to the exciting world of materials science and engineering!

“I was so happy to share some of my knowledge and experiences, and it was such a sentimental and rewarding way to finish up my senior year at Drexel,” said Talia. “Seeing the curiosity and enthusiasm of the students reminded me of why I fell in love with materials engineering. It is such an interdisciplinary field that there's something interesting for everyone and anyone.”

Thank you, Talia, for inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers and for representing Drexel so well. We can't wait to see where your journey takes you next! 🐉🔬✨

Each spring, our senior design teams showcase their hard work and innovation through final presentations, and a team is selected to represent the department at the school-wide Celebration of Engineering senior design department champions competition. We’re thrilled to announce that Alessandra Cabrera, Evelyn Carpenter and Lucy Plant have been chosen for their project, “Photothermal Desalination for Efficient, Energy-Cheap Freshwater Production”
Congratulations to this outstanding team—and to all of our seniors for delivering truly professional, impactful presentations. We couldn’t be prouder!
📅 Join us at the Celebration of Engineering
🕑 June 5 | 2–5 PM
📍 Bossone Lobby & Mitchell Auditorium
Come explore incredible student work across disciplines, including:
• Senior design department champions
• First-year design projects
• Undergraduate research
• Open senior design submissions
Cast your vote for your favorites and help celebrate the creativity and innovation of our engineering students!

International co-op greetings from Braxton Troxel, who is working as a research assistant for the A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing, a public research institute in Singapore! At A*STAR Braxton is conducting computational materials research, running DFT calculations and training machine learning interatomic potentials so that researchers can better understand the structures and properties of the amorphous phases of optical phase change materials as well as their crystallization kinetics.

Joining him for the photo are his supervisor Dr. Liu Yun and Valerie Lim, Director for the Global Career Center.