The MMRI Annual Summit was held on June 3–4, 2026, at the North Campus Research Complex. The event brought together over 220 researchers, students, faculty, and industry partners to showcase cutting-edge materials research and foster collaboration across disciplines. The UM attendees came from multiple colleges/departments: CoE (Materials Science & Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Naval Architecture & Marine Engineering, Industrial & Operations Engineering, Robotics Engineering, Civil & Environment Engineering), LS&A (Chemistry, Applied Physics, Physics, Earth & Environmental Sciences, Statistics), Medical School, Pharmacy, Ross Business School, and Dental School.
This year’s summit featured more than 90 poster presentations from undergraduate, master’s, and Ph.D. students, 11 industry presentations from leading organizations including Raytheon, ASICS, Dow, General Motors, Lam Research, First Solar, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, and ZEISS, as well as over 10 presentations from faculty members and MMRI seed funding recipients.
The MMRI 2026 Annual Summit Agenda contains detailed information about all posters, presenters, and speakers.
Be sure to explore the MMRI 2026 Summit Photo Gallery to relive the highlights and see the excitement and engagement that made this year’s event such a success!
Check out this LinkedIn article highlighting the main events: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mmri-mc2-annual-summit-bringing-materials-vy6kc/.
Student/Postdoc Poster Winners
(MC)2 Category
Gold Winner
Amaan Mohammad
Affiliated with University of Michigan Chemistry, Amaan Mohammad received the Gold award for his project titled, “Aramid Nanofiber Binders for Sustainable Dry Cathode Manufacturing”. His research focuses on developing sustainable, fluorine-free binders for dry cathode manufacturing in lithium-ion batteries. The central question is “how does binder chemistry and electrode architecture influence the mechanical stability, ionic and electronic transport, and long-term electrochemical performance of dry processed cathodes?” This is key to understanding how aramid nanofibers, a more sustainable alternative to conventional fluorinated binders, can maintain quality and performance of cathodes.
We asked Amaan what part of his research he was proud of, and he stated that he was proud of “showing that aramid nanofibers can serve not only as a sustainable binder material but also as a structural network that helps maintain electrode integrity during dry processing and battery cycling.” He is excited to combine material synthesis, electrode fabrication, and microscopy to understand nanoscale interactions that advance battery performance, and we are too!
Silver Winners
Lucero Lopez
Affiliated with University of Michigan Materials Science & Engineering, Lucero Lopez received the Silver award for her project titled, “Characterization of deformation mechanisms in Mg-1Y alloy utilizing in situ tensile testing in SEM and High-Resolution Electron Back Scattered Diffraction”. Lucero’s research involves magnesium, a light-weight structural metal, that has several engineering applications. The challenge with magnesium is its low ductility at room temperature, but Lucero’s work considers if adding small amounts of rare earth metals, such as yttrium, can positively influence formability of Mg-alloys. Her work aims to answer “How does yttrium change the deformation mechanisms in magnesium?” and “How can we employ multi-scale, advanced characterization techniques to capture the mechanisms of deformation and optimize it for commercial adoption of Mg-alloys?”
Lucero’s work is highly relevant in a time where all industries are looking to cut material cost and waste by utilizing thinner, smaller, and light-weight materials. This means that her work has real, positive environmental impacts as it pushes towards greener technologies with greener materials.
Lastly, Lucero stays down to earth, pun intended, by saying she’s most proud of her metallographic preparation abilities. This is essential to her data collection since her microscopic imaging and data require pristine surfaces, and in her words, “the microstructure speaks for itself”. Indeed it does, and with her advanced microscopy techniques, widening computational techniques, and expert surface preparation, please connect with Lucero to learn more about Mg-alloys, deformation mechanisms, and metallurgy.
Lingfeng Zhou
Affiliated with University of Michigan Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences, Lingfeng Zhou received the Silver award for his project titled, “Investigating the Effect of Molybdenum Content on Proton Irradiated FeCrAl Alloys”. Lingfeng’s research aims to understand “how FeCrAl alloys, accident-tolerant-fuel (ATF) cladding materials, behave under irradiation conditions relevant to nuclear reactor applications”. FeCrAl alloys are promising ATF materials, according to Lingfend and other researchers, but their long-term performance can be negatively impacted by irradiation-induced defect formation, phase precipitation, and hardening. This is why Lingfeng is looking for alloy elements, particularly Mo-content, to control radiation-induced microstructural changes resulting in the ideal, mechanical response.
Kody Whisnant
Affiliated with University of Michigan Chemical Engineering, Kody Whisnant received the Silver award for his project titled, “Structural Complexity Quantification of Network Materials Using a Graph Theoretical Approach”.
Structural complexity is the material architecture reflecting order and disorder, and for networks of biological and inorganic materials, it is a “crucial parameter controlling vital properties that determine material behavior,” Kody stated. The main problem is that there is no unified approach to measure structural complexity. Kody’s work addresses this by using graph theoretical protocols that quantify characterization of material complexity and enables for complex material property predication, making it an effective tool in smart materials design. This will advance the age of smart design and manufacturing by accelerating “mission-critical” material combinations.
His research on network materials is reflected in what he values in science and engineering, which is to go beyond one’s “specific field” or “branch” and to address larger problems “collaboratively”. He is most proud of the interdisciplinary nature of his work.
Varun Srinivas Venkatesh
Affiliated with University of Michigan Materials Science and Engineering, Varun Srinivas Venkatesh received the Silver award for his project titled, “Learning grain growth outcomes from experimental datasets using graph neural networks”.
Varun’s research asks “whether grain growth is governed purely by local geometry, as classical theories assume, or whether it is also shaped by the topology of the surrounding grain network“.
He graphed neural networks trained on microstructural data, and it showed that network effects, in addition to local features, strongly influence grain growth. This finding explains why real microstructures deviate from ideal grain growth laws. Furthermore, this approach demonstrates where existing models and simulations fall short of experiments. The network-informed corrections from real data improve simulation accuracy and reveal missing components of current models.
Varun combines machine-learning with physical simulation to advance smart materials design through predicting grain structure, and unsurprisingly, this expertise across experiment, simulation, theory, and machine-learning is why Varun values and is proud of his research. He values challenging problems that require genuine engagement of all those four areas.
Non (MC)2Category
Gold Winner
William Brackett
Affiliated with University of Michigan Chemical Engineering, William Brackett received the Gold award for his project titled, “Molecularly-linked Dynamic Covalent Nanocrystal Gels Show Size-Dependent Arrest Kinetics Before Relaxing to Common States”.
What are colloidal nanocrystal gels, and why is William studying them? In William’s words, “Colloidal nanocrystal (NC) gels are soft networks of rigid nanoscale building blocks that leverage properties of individual NCs and emergent collective behavior to create tunable optical, electronic, catalytic, and therapeutic materials”. Not everything is understood though, and this is because of the “complexity of nanoscale interactions, spatiotemporal limits of experimental techniques, and difficult synthesis of model systems for fundamental studies”. In his approach, William uses tin-doped indium oxide NCs, which are gelled through molecular linkages of their ligands with complementary end-functionality, to investigate how nanometer variations in NC radius affects (1) rate, (2) mechanism, and (3) emergent structure and dynamics of gelation. Recently, William has upgraded to using x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (XPCS) to measure the structure and dynamics throughout the sol-gel transition for a series of NCs with radii 5, 6, 7, and 8 nm.
William has shared some key results, such as:
- Gelation rate exhibits a strong inverse correlation to particle size, with 5 nm NC gels forming at timescales an order of magnitude below 8 nm NC gels.
- Despite disparate gelation rate, the evolution of dynamical nonergodicity and relaxation time are strikingly superimposable.
- When normalized by characteristic times in the dynamical evolution, the structural evolutions of gels of different NC size show similar normalized-time-scaling of gel growth.
- The superimposition of dynamical evolution and congruence of structural evolution reveal mechanistic agreement of gelation relative to the time of network formation across measured sizes.
- The long-time dynamics within gel networks also indicate highly nonergodic relaxations consistent with locally confined particle motion, while local structure collapses to a common trajectory across size, suggesting gel networks of varied sizes exhibit common aging of metastable structure through similar local rearrangements.
Overall, studying colloidal gelation of nanoparticles is a step toward establishing general framework for how colloidal interactions at the nanoscale govern assembly and provides insight for colloidally assembled nano-materials across a range of applications including energy storage, catalysis, drug delivery, optical materials, and more. This is highly significant in the soft matter community as key physics is being established and frameworked.
There’s still many XPCS experiments and data analysis that can be done here, but for now, over 40 terabytes of data has been generated, reduced to about 150 gigabytes of numerical data, has been sorted and analyzed. This is an impressive feat that William mentioned he is proud of, and we look forward to see how his research advances. He’d also like to thank his collaborators at University of Michigan, Argonne National Laboratory, and the German DESY research center.
Silver Winners
Paola V Mendez
Affiliated with University of Michigan Materials Science and Engineering, Paola V Mendez received the Silver award for her project titled, “Electrochemical Storage of Non-Lithium Alkali Ions in Wadsley-Roth Phase Nanocrystals”.
Please refer to any information on her LinkedIn or her research webpage.
Chuqi Huang
Affiliated with University of Michigan Materials Science and Engineering, Chuqi Huang received the Silver award for her project titled, “Photochemical Fuel Carrier Molecules for Robotic Embodied Energy”. Chuqi’s research aims to address the limits of miniaturizing autonomous systems in robotics by reducing the reliance on conventional, bulky mechatromechanical parts and encoding core robotic functions into molecular architecture of the material. This is done by chemically caging highly volatile fuels inside stable solid-state polymer matrices without leakage and harnessing dynamic covalent networks so that physical recovery from repeated, operational stress is possible.
Chuqi states the implication of work as reframing materials from “passive structural components into active agents of intelligent behavior, providing transferable macromolecular design principles for the broader fields of soft robotics and active matter“. There are huge medical and environmental remediation applications that this advanced miniaturization of devices can address. Furthermore, a “closed-loop framework for self-healing and total material recyclability” can by accomplished by incorporating covalent adaptable networks into the robot’s chassis, effectively introducing a more sustainable, zero-waste approach to next-generation transient devices.
For Chuqi, the most rewarding part of her research in organic chemistry and robotics is to “achieve a hybrid control system where we decoupled translational movement—switched on and off photochemically at the molecular level—from magnetic rotational steering, allowing a microrobot to seamlessly navigate a complex physical maze,” and “seeing our photoactive fuel-carrier composites maintain perfect chemical activity and full locomotive speed after two full years of ambient storage was a profound validation that long-term, bio-inspired “embodied energy” is entirely achievable in synthetic matter”.
Her work sounds straight out of a sci-fi movie, and we can’t wait to see what’s next.
Zoe Meyer
Affiliated with University of Michigan Materials Science and Engineering, Zoe Meyer received the Silver award for her project titled, “Durable, broad-spectrum anti-biofouling polyurethane-based coatings”.
Please refer to any information on her work LinkedIn or her research webpage.
Woo Je Chang
Affiliated with University of Michigan Chemical Engineering, Woo Je Chang received the Silver award for his project titled, “Electrochemical control of tunable infrared nanocrystal metasurfaces”. This work aimes to address “how can colloidal nanocrystal-based assemblies be used to create pixelated structures with dynamic optical responses?” This is significant as it aims to replace top-down lithographic techniques, which have scaling issues due to expensive instrumentation, vacuum processing, and relatively slow fabrication steps, with colloidal nanocrystals as inks. This can allow for the creation of arrays that are scalable and precise.
Woo-Je focuses on developing tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) nanocrystal-based photonic structures that exhibit dynamic optical responses and could potentially be used in pixelated or addressable formats. This can address and expand the current static or templated optical responses that many existing nanocrystal assembies are limited to. The broader impact of this would be low-cost, scalable platforms that can manufacture electronics and photonic technologies that are essential in clean energy, sensing, and information transduction.
The exciting aspect of Woo-Je’s nanomaterial research is that “a single scientific concept can open opportunities across many different fields“. Woo-Je thanked his advisor, Prof.Delia Milliron, and his other collaborators. He enjoys learning and mentoring, and we hope to hear more from him in the future.
Ganlin Chen
Affiliated with University of Michigan Materials Science and Engineering, Ganlin Chen received the Silver award for his project titled, “Prediction of Nucleation Energetics and Critical Stress for Phase Transformation-induced Deformation Twinning in Metastable Titanium Alloys”. The central question answered by Ganlin’s work are “how do atomistic twin nucleation dynamics govern the macroscopic yield strength of metastable TWIP alloys?”
Overall, this work builds a theoretical framework that opens pathways for Ti-alloy design in the temperature-composition space. This is done by bridging these length scales.
Thank you to all the poster winners for your amazing work! We look forward to seeing what you all do next!
From left to right: Amit Misra, Max Shtein, Varun Srinivas Venkatesh, Kody Whisnant, Lucero Lopez, Mohammad Amaan, Lingfeng Zhou. Credit: Allen Hunter, University of Michigan Engineering.
