Materials Science & Engineering

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.

The recently announced Drexel 40 under 40 includes three extremely accomplished young MSE alums: Zikria Saif (BS ’25), Kyle Matthews (PhD ’24) and Steven Spurgeon (PhD ’14). Read all about their amazing achievements in the latest issue of Drexel Magazine https://drexelmagazine.org/story/40-under-40-2026/

Spring and summer mean co op season for Drexel MSE students—and we love hearing where their experiences take them!

For her final co op, fourth year student Olivia Chille is working as a cosmetic formulation chemist at Good Molecules, supporting the development and optimization of skincare products. From formulating and testing prototypes to evaluating ingredient performance and assisting with stability and compatibility studies, Olivia is gaining hands on experience at every stage of product development.

As Olivia shares: “This experience has been giving me hands on exposure to product development and the practical application of chemistry in the cosmetics industry!”
Love to see our students applying their knowledge and skills in exciting, real world settings! 💄🔬

Big news for Drexel Materials! Our program has climbed to #32 globally in the 2025 Shanghai Rankings Global Ranking of Academic Subjects, up from #41 last year—and ranks #13 in the U.S.
Proud of our faculty, students, researchers and staff driving this momentum forward! 🔬✨
Read more about our rise in rankings https://drexel.edu/engineering/news-events/news/archive/2026/April/mse-shanghai-2025/.
Image credit: MAX Dragon, Babak Anasori (PhD ‘14)

Professional development opportunities like conference participation are another form of experiential learning that we support for our students whenever we can! Our department was thrilled to be able to chip in to help students Boran Duman, Yael Passy, Prastuti Upadhyay and Jaxon Weiss attend the TMS 2026 Annual Meeting in San Diego. The students attended workshops, represented Drexel Materials in the Materials Bowl, and connected with the broader materials community.

👏 Special congratulations to Prastuti, who received the Extracting Processing Division Scholarship Award and presented her research in a student poster session!

Congratulations to department head Caroline Schauer for being elected AAAS Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science! AAAS is one of the largest global scientific societies with members in more than 91 countries around the world. It is also a leading publisher of scientific research through its Science family of journals. AAAS Fellowship is recognized as one of the most prestigious distinctions in the scientific community. Read more at https://drexel.edu/engineering/news-events/news/archive/2026/April/schauer-aaas-fellow/

Great masks, great materials, great vibes 🎭✨ The Drexel Material Advantage chapter’s Materials Masquerade Ball brought the creativity and style, with masks designed to represent their favorite materials. Congrats to Best Mask winner Hans Geiser, for a victorious wood design 🌳👏

We had a fantastic showcase celebrating materials related undergraduate research, bringing together students from Drexel MSE, Chemistry, and Biomed — along with students conducting research with Drexel Materials alum Amanda Huon, now a professor of physics at Saint Joseph’s University.
🏆 Congratulations to our poster competition winners:
🥇 Hans Geiser (Materials)
🥈 Abigail Meek (Chemistry) & Elizabeth Hartnett (Chemistry)
🥉 Ria Goal (Biomed)
Amazing work by all of these students — the future of materials research is bright! 🙌🔬✨

Cheerio! Earlier this week our student group Material Advantage hosted their annual authentic British afternoon tea with Professor Emeritus Rick Knight, complete with scones and jam, cucumber sandwiches and digestive biscuits. Since we’ve come back from the pandemic, this event has become a favorite late winter gathering and a sort of celebration of the approaching spring. (Or maybe a way of conjuring it up. Let’s hope!)

More big congratulations are in order for members of our outstanding Drexel Materials community! We’re so proud to celebrate the many Drexel Materials faculty and students who are recipients of this year’s College of Engineering awards:

Asst. Prof. Yong-Jie Hu – Outstanding Early-Career Research Award
Prof. Steve May – Outstanding Career Research Award
Prof. Chris Weyant – Outstanding Service Award
Alessandra Cabrera – Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award
Christopher Tandoc – Outstanding PhD Student Award
Xinle (Leo) Zhang – Outstanding PhD Student Award

Congratulations to all — your leadership, scholarship, and service continue to advance the field and inspire those around you.