The College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS) celebrated exceptional students and faculty for their academic excellence, service and leadership during its annual Wilson Awards Banquet held Sunday, April 15. The awards banquet is the college’s annual celebration of faculty and student accomplishments and is named in honor of Matthew and Anne Wilson, major benefactors of the college.
Each year, Penn State honors several students for the highest levels of academic excellence, outstanding leadership and meritorious service. The 2018 student award recipients exemplify best practices and achievements among Penn State students, reflecting the University's mission of teaching, research and service. -- Astronaut Scholarship Foundation recipients: Hannah Pohlmann
Students and faculty in Penn State’s Material Sciences and Engineering Department (MatSE) can take the heat when the furnaces are blazing in Penn State’s glass-blowing studio. MatSE offers unique experiences for its students and MatSE junior Briana Bennett is among one of those students getting a special hands-on experience in the studio.
A newly discovered structure of a sodium-based material allows the materials to be used as an electrolyte in solid-state batteries, according to researchers from Penn State and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). The team is fine-tuning the material using an iterative design approach that they hope will shave years off the time from research to everyday use.
Five graduate students in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS) received honors in the 33rd annual Research Exhibition, hosted by The Graduate School at Penn State. Preeya Kuray, materials science and engineering, and Devesh Kumar, energy and mineral engineering, received second- and third-place honors, respectively, in the Engineering category. The event was held March 23 and 25 on Penn State's University Park campus.
As a child, Courtney Mensch felt an overwhelming urge to give money to the homeless people on the streets of New York City. Her mother reminded her that it wasn’t possible to give money to everyone, so she tried to give flowers to as many homeless people as she could, delighted when she could bring a smile their faces. Mensch, a senior materials science and engineering major in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS), hasn’t stopped spreading smiles since then.
Allison Beese, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, received the 2018 Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) AIME Robert Lansing Hardy Award for exceptional promise in the field of mechanics of metallic materials and in particular, the advancement of mechanical metallurgy understanding in additive manufacturing.
Zi-Kui Liu, distinguished professor of materials science and engineering in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, received the 2018 William Hume-Rothery Award for his exceptional contributions to the science of alloys during the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society’s (TMS) Annual Meeting and Exhibition, held March 11-15 in Phoenix. Liu also gave a keynote talk titled “Computational Thermodynamics of Materials and Its Applications” as part of the William Hume-Rothery Memorial Symposium.
Forty-one graduate students received awards for their research and creative scholarship in the 33rd annual Graduate Exhibition, held March 23 and 25 on Penn State's University Park campus. A complete list of winners is available below.
Development of a theoretical basis for ultrahigh piezoelectricity in ferroelectric materials led to a new material with twice the piezo response of any existing commercial ferroelectric ceramics, according to an international team of researchers from Penn State, China and Australia.