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Professor Ivan Smalyukh is one of the winners of the 2021 Langmuir Lectureship Award for his innovative work in the colloid and surface chemistry fields. Smalyukh will deliver a special presentation at the 2021 ACS Fall National Meeting, as will Professor Deborah Leckband of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who also earned the honor.

Associate Professor Wil Srubar recently participated in the "Pride in Stem: A Conversation about Research, Mentorship and Advocacy" panel, a National Science Foundation Distinguished Lecture. The panel included NSF staff from the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, the LGBTQ+ and Allied Employee Resource Group and fellow NSF CAREER awardees who have demonstrated committment to the LGBTQ+ community through their work.

Nicholas Kellaris (MatSci’20) is the Director of Research at Artimus Robotics, where he focuses on studying and improving electrohydraulic actuators—devices that convert stimulus into movement—and conducts research into the materials systems from which they are built.
Kellaris formed the company with his fellow graduate students and his advisor, then-Assistant

Professor Stephanie J. Bryant was recently elected by her fellow Materials Science and Engineering faculty to lead the program as its new director, starting on July 1.

Researchers from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the Materials Science and Engineering Program are among the authors of “Polymer inhibitors enable >900 cm2 dynamic windows based on reversible metal electrodeposition with high solar modulation” which appeared in the April issue of the highly prestigious science journal Nature Energy.

Elizabeth Hjelvik of the Straub Research Group was selected by the National Science Foundation for the prestigious Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), which provides significant annual funding and professional development opportunities to outstanding graduate students working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Cierra Walker, a PhD candidate in the both the Materials Science and Engineering Program and Interdisciplinary Quantitative Biology Program at CU �鶹ӰԺ is the first author on a new paper in Nature that explores what happens to cells after a heart attack.

Shane Frazier is a graduate student in the Materials Science and Engineering Program, working in the Living Materials Lab under Associate Professor Wil Srubar. He is preparing to defend his PhD thesis in late May. Frazier earned his BS in Mechanical Engineering and his BA in Chemistry from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He is originally from Greenfield, Indiana.

Danielle Beatty is a first-year graduate student studying under Professor Wil Srubar in the Living Materials Laboratory. Beatty completed a bachelor’s-master’s degree in materials science and engineering at the University of Utah in May 2020. Beatty hails from the Salt Lake City area.

Fourteen university innovators pitched their technologies at Lab Venture Challenge (LVC), a funding competition hosted by Venture Partners at CU �鶹ӰԺ that helps commercially-promising technologies accelerate into impactful business ventures. Judges from the local entrepreneurial ecosystem awarded a record total of 12 grants—up to $125,000 each—for the top physical science, engineering and bioscience innovations demonstrating high commercial potential, a clear path to a compelling market and strong scientific support.