FORGES is a summer program aimed at high school students interested in STEM careers. In partnership with the University of Delaware, the program offers hands-on experiences in materials science, chemistry, biology, and physics. Activities included identifying polymers, measuring material properties, and performing gene editing techniques. After the program, 87% of students felt more confident about attending college, and all participants were more inclined to pursue STEM careers and felt better prepared for laboratory work.

Connecting Research and Education At TExas (CREATE) is a partnership program established between UT Austin and Austin Community College (ACC) whose goal is to increase retention of community college students in STEM. CREATE works to achieve this goal by building relationships between ACC students and UT Austin researchers through a fall/spring seminar series held at ACC that features UT faculty speakers and a 9-week summer research program that pairs ACC students with research mentors at UT Austin.

Effect: We have demonstrated that the shape of the Hanle curve (non-local resistance versus applied magnetic field) can be manipulated using an ac drive.

The 2024 Holiday Science Lecture “Science by Candlelight” was held at Princeton University on December 7, 2024 with over 530 people attending two lectures at McDonnell Hall. Howard Stone led the lecture, and was joined by Julia Mikhailova, Angie Miller (chemistry department demonstrator) and other PCCM researchers (including graduate students and postdocs).

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a novel and versatile modeling strategy to simulate polyelectrolyte systems. The model has applications for creating new materials as well as for studying polyelectrolytes, including DNA and RNA.

Discovery: Magnetic properties of cobalt films can be optimized through nanoscale structuring and thermal annealing.

New property of electrons may lead to novel electronic devices How electrons conduct electricity depends on their valley  

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have made a microfabricated laser using semiconductor fabrication methods that can control two features of the light particles: their orbit and their spin. This allows them to make light particles with four states simultaneously. These higher-dimensional quantum bits (qudits) can store more information and better avoid noise. They can also make quantum communication more secure and faster and allow more secure communications.

We developed one-component, sequence-defined Ionizable Amphiphilic Janus Dendrimers (IAJDs) and their assemblies with mRNA. These Dendrimersome Nanoparticles (DNPs) were investigated for the delivery of mRNA for vaccines and nanotherapeutics.