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Professor Dipanjan Pan, the Dorothy Foehr Huck & J. Lloyd Chair Professor in Nanomedicine at Penn State has been named a 2025 fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). Being named an NAI Fellow is the highest professional distinction currently awarded to inventors in the nation.

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.

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.

Penn State had a strong showing at the Materials Science & Technology (MS&T) technical meeting and exhibition annual conference in Columbus, Ohio, with current students and graduates in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MatSE) earning accolades.

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.

The Quantum Hub, housed under the Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS), has awarded Quantum SuperSEED grants to three Penn State faculty research teams. The program, which invests in high-impact quantum research, is designed to bring together Penn State faculty from across different departments and disciplines to tackle complex research challenges and advance quantum science, engineering and computation.

Since the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was identified in 1983, roughly 91.4 million people around the world have contracted the virus and an additional 44.1 million have died from related causes. Currently, nearly 40 million people worldwide are living with HIV-1, the version of the virus that causes more than 95% of infections. While significant progress has been made in HIV vaccine research, according to Penn State Professor Dipanjan Pan, there is currently no approved vaccine for HIV. Research is ongoing, though, he said, with multiple preventive and therapeutic strategies under investigation — but some vaccine candidates can cause participants to falsely test HIV-positive, complicating diagnosis and clinical management.

Matias Moreno is a third-year undergraduate student majoring in materials science and engineering in Penn State’s College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS). His goal, he said, is to earn a doctoral degree in the field and contribute to sustainable energy technologies that improve access and infrastructure for resource-limited communities.

Penn State’s LionGlass project has reached a major milestone in its partnership with Italian glassmaker Bormioli Luigi, marking one year of collaboration and the signing of a second-year agreement to continue commercialization efforts in the cosmetics packaging industry.

After more than a decade as director of the Penn State Materials Research Institute (MRI), Clive Randall, Evan Pugh University Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, will step down to refocus his efforts to teaching and research. He will remain on as director through the summer of 2026 to help guide the transition.