MRI

By Jamie Oberdick

Yang Yang, assistant professor of engineering science and mechanics in the Penn State College of Engineering, has been selected as a recipient of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Early Career Research Program Award for 2025.

LionGlass, a stronger and more sustainable glass invented at Penn State, may soon be developed for windows and windshields, thanks to a new partnership with North America’s largest architectural glass manufacturer Vitro Architectural Glass. The company signed a multi-year research agreement to scale up the new, patent-pending glass technology for use in flat glass applications across architectural and automotive markets.

How the humble leafhopper’s nanoengineering could enable invisibility cloaks and next-gen sensors

By Jamie Oberdick

A new class of ceramics are not only transparent, but they can control light with exceptional efficiency — better than any theories predicted. Now, an advanced theory put forth by researcher at Penn State may explain why this material is so good at light control, which could lead to large-scale manufacturing of these materials for faster, smaller and more energy efficient technologies used in high-speed communications, medical imaging and advanced sensing.

Burcu Ozden, assistant professor of engineering and physics at Penn State Abington, received a three-year, $800,000 research grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop advanced two-dimensional materials for use in quantum technologies. The project, set to begin in 2026, will be conducted in collaboration with faculty, undergraduates and graduate students at Abington and University Park.

Penn State has launched a new center dedicated to quantum science and germinating cross-disciplinary collaboration. The Center for Theory of Emergent Quantum Matter (C-TEQ) aims to unite researchers across colleges, institutes and departments, catalyze transformative discoveries and enhance the University’s global visibility in quantum science, according to Jainendra K. Jain, Evan Pugh University Professor, Erwin W. Müller Professor of Physics and Eberly Chair in Physics.

To investigate the interactions between the influenza virus and bacterial microbe infections and how these interactions impact the lungs, a team co-led by researchers at Penn State and Duke University School of Medicine has been awarded a four-year, $3.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Six materials researchers at Penn State have received the 2025 Rustum and Della Roy Innovation in Materials Research Award, recognizing a wide range of research with societal impact. The award is presented by the Materials Research Institute (MRI) for recent interdisciplinary materials research at Penn State that yields innovative and unexpected results.