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The Department of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) has awarded a combined total of $51.1 million to two university research alliances to counter threats of destruction, with a specific focus on improving current and developing future warfighter technology. Penn State is leading the Interaction of Ionizing Radiation with Matter University Research Alliance, which was awarded $30 million for the next five years, with the potential of extending the alliance for a total of nine years and $54 million of funding with additional funding opportunities available. 

A supersensitive dopamine detector can help in the early diagnosis of several disorders that result in too much or too little dopamine, according to a group led by Penn State and including Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and universities in China and Japan.

A team of four College of Engineering students, one College of Earth and Mineral Sciences student and one engineering faculty member recently won the top prize in the Ben Franklin (BF) TechCelerator @ State College program. 

The possibility of achieving room temperature superconductivity took a tiny step forward with a recent discovery by a team of Penn State physicists and materials scientists.

Your next cell phone will be harder to scratch, writes WIRED. Our glass expert John Mauro of Penn State Department of Materials Science and Engineering explains why that will also limit cracks. Mauro worked for Corning® Gorilla® Glass for 18 years developing several iterations of the famed Gorilla Glass.

Through the investigation of insect surfaces, Penn State researchers have detailed a previously unidentified nanostructure that can be used to engineer stronger, more resilient water repellent coatings.

Penn State will receive more than $10 million from the U.S. Department of Energy as an Energy Frontier Research Center Award. This is one of 10 awards announced in 2020, and the second EFRC awarded to Penn State researchers.

Materials research is about more than technical impact—it’s about having a human impact as well. Director of the Materials Research Institute at The Pennsylvania State University Clive Randall discusses the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration between scientific fields, his work on cold sintering, and his experience as a first-generation college student.

A new fundamental understanding of polymeric relaxor ferroelectric behavior could lead to advances in flexible electronics, actuators and transducers, energy storage, piezoelectric sensors and electrocaloric cooling, according to a team of researchers at Penn State and North Carolina State.

A total of 64 Erickson Discovery Grants were awarded for summer 2020, allowing for funded student research, scholarship or creative processes.