News from 2023


X-ray imaging captures fleeting defects in sodium-ion batteries

Sodium-ion batteries have been touted as a sustainable alternative to lithium-ion batteries because they are powered by a more abundant natural resource. However, sodium-ion batteries have hit a significant snag:


Improving Crystal Engineering with DNA

Sodium-ion batteries have been touted as a sustainable alternative to lithium-ion batteries because they are powered by a more abundant natural resource.


Two physics graduate students chosen for DOE program

Matthew George Signorelli and Ningdong Wang, graduate students in the field of physics, are among the 87 students selected to receive the prestigious U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Graduate Student Research Award (SCGSR) for the 2022 Solicitation 2 cycle.


Iowa State’s Mallapragada Named To Key Doe Advisory Committee

On April 21, 2023, Iowa State University Associate Vice President for Research, Surya Mallapragada, was sworn in as a member of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (BESAC) for a term that runs through December 31, 2025.


MIT engineers “grow” atomically thin transistors on top of computer chips

Emerging AI applications, like chatbots that generate natural human language, demand denser, more powerful computer chips.


Trees may hold the solution for keeping engines running smoothly and efficiently – and possibly replacing gasoline

When it comes to making internal combustion engines run better, the solution may come from trees.


RPI Doctoral Student One of 87 Nationwide To Receive Research Opportunity at National Lab

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute doctoral student Riley Barton has been selected as one of 87 outstanding graduate students in the United States by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science Graduate Student Research Program (SCGSR).


Lincoln University Wins DOE Grant to Train a Diverse STEM Workforce

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently awarded an $800,000 grant to a Lincoln University of Missouri professor to fund efforts to develop a more diverse STEM workforce over the next four years.


Postdoc wins prestigious fellowship

The Electron-Ion Collider Center at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has awarded a research fellowship to Sebouh Paul, a postdoctoral researcher in the UCR Department of Physics and Astronomy.


Three graduate students chosen for DOE program

Matthew George Signorelli, Ningdong Wang and Aileen Luo are among the 87 students selected to receive the prestigious U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Graduate Student Research Award (SCGSR) for the 2022 Solicitation 2 cycle.


Physicists discover ‘stacked pancakes of liquid magnetism’

Physicists have discovered “stacked pancakes of liquid magnetism” that may account for the strange electronic behavior of some layered helical magnets.


Strings Of Magnetic Energy Shown To Flex, Wiggle, And Reconnect

A multi-institutional team exploring the physics of collective behavior has developed and measured a model nanomagnetic array in which the behavior can be best understood as that of a set of wiggling strings.



An Intuitive Approach to Physics Research: Get to Know Graduate Student Marshal Ohana Benevides Rodrigues

Most people think of Neapolitan ice cream when they hear vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, but Ohana Benevides Rodrigues G’22 uses vanilla, chocolate and strawberry to explain one of the main features of the complex world of neutrinos—tiny, nearly massless, chargeless particles that travel at near light speeds and are abundant in the universe.


IU students to conduct research at Department of Energy’s National Laboratories

Three Indiana University Bloomington graduate students will conduct research at National Laboratories as part of the United States Department of Energy’s Office of Science Graduate Student Research program.


Study presents new clues about the rise of Earth’s continents

New research from Cornell and the Smithsonian Institution deepens the geological understanding of Earth’s continents by testing and ultimately eliminating a popular hypothesis about why continental and oceanic crusts have contrasting compositions.


Australian Bushfires Likely Contributed To Multiyear La Niña

The catastrophic Australian bushfires in 2019-2020 contributed to ocean cooling thousands of miles away, ultimately nudging the Tropical Pacific into a rare multi-year La Niña event that dissipated only recently.


Machine Learning-Based Protein Annotation Tool Predicts Protein Function

Microbes drive key processes of life on Earth. They affect global elemental cycles—the movement of carbon, nitrogen, and other elements.


New Insights on the Interplay of Electromagnetism and the Weak Nuclear Force

Outside atomic nuclei, neutrons are unstable particles, with a lifetime of about fifteen minutes.


A Simple Solution for Nuclear Matter in Two Dimensions

Understanding the behavior of nuclear matter—including the quarks and gluons that make up the protons and neutrons of atomic nuclei—is extremely complicated.