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Penn State's Office of Faculty Affairs has named 14 new distinguished professors for 2026.  

The distinguished professor or distinguished librarian title recognizes outstanding academic contribution to the University. This special academic title is bestowed upon a limited number of professors who are leaders in their fields of research or creative activity and who have demonstrated significant accomplishments with respect to teaching, research or creative activity, and service.  or distinguished librarian title recognizes outstanding academic contribution to the University. This special academic title is bestowed upon a limited number of professors who are leaders in their fields of research or creative activity and who have demonstrated significant accomplishments with respect to teaching, research or creative activity, and service. 

Solar power continues to grow — accounting for most new capacity added to U.S. electric grids in 2024 — but the mid-1950s technology most often used to capture the sun’s energy comes with environmental costs. 

Manufacturing silicon solar panels is an energy-intensive process that requires toxic chemicals and creates recycling challenges. But lower-impact organic solar cells, made with less harmful materials, can break down too easily for large-scale deployment. According to Penn State researchers, adding a chemical derived from hydrogen and carbon may help organic solar cells become a more viable alternative. The team published their findings in the journal ACS Materials Au. The paper also earned recognition as part of the “2025 Rising Stars in Materials Science” issue from ACS Materials Au, to be published this month.

Despite the prevalence of synthetic materials across different industries and scientific fields, most are developed to serve a limited set of functions. To address this inflexibility, researchers at Penn State, led by Hongtao Sun, assistant professor of industrial and manufacturing engineering (IME), have developed a fabrication method that can print multifunctional “smart synthetic skin” — configurable materials that can be used to encrypt or decrypt information, enable adaptive camouflage, power soft robotics and more.

A bouncy ball may seem like a simple toy, but for a group of Penn State graduate students, it has become a powerful way to help children and families understand how materials behave — and how science connects to everyday life.

Power sources used in devices found in or around biological tissue must be flexible and non-toxic, while still powerful enough to support demanding technologies such as medical devices or soft robotics. To achieve this balance, researchers at Penn State are taking inspiration from a “shocking” place: electric eels.

The 18th annual Materials Visualization Competition (MVC18), an annual scientific and artistic visual competition sponsored by the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Materials Research Institute, is now accepting submissions through March 1.

Penn State has nominated four undergraduates for the 2026 Goldwater Scholarship, a highly competitive national award that recognizes potential leaders in research in the fields of natural sciences, mathematics and engineering.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used to analyze medical images, materials data and scientific measurements, but many systems struggle when real-world data do not match ideal conditions. Measurements collected from different instruments, experiments or simulations often vary widely in resolution, noise and reliability. Traditional machine-learning models typically assume those differences are negligible — an assumption that can limit accuracy and trustworthiness.

Pairing elements such as sulfur, selenium or tellurium with metals produces compounds whose atomic interactions give them unusual and useful electrical, optical and magnetic behavior. These materials, called chalcogenides, are the focus of Qihua “David” Zhang’s work as a postdoctoral researcher in the Two-Dimensional Crystal Consortium (2DCC) at Penn State in the laboratory of Stephanie Law, Wilson Family Fellow and associate professor of materials science and engineering. Zhang recently earned the 2025 American Vacuum Society’s Thin Film Division Distinguished Technologist Award for his contributions to growing these materials with extreme purity and precision.

Two Penn State professors were named to the 2025 class of fellows by the National Academy of Inventors (NAI): Swaroop Ghosh, professor of electrical engineering and computer science (EECS), and Dipanjan Pan, the Dorothy Foehr Huck & J. Lloyd Chair Professor in Nanomedicine. Only a relatively small group of academic inventors receive this honor, which is considered the highest professional distinction, each year. They will be officially inducted at the 15th Annual NAI Conference on June 4 in Los Angeles.