This fall marks the sixth year of Notre Dame’s Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) PhD program, an interdisciplinary initiative spanning seven academic departments and programs. Since its establishment in 2020, the program has welcomed 95 students, with enrollment over the past two years doubling that of previous years. To date, 22 students have earned their PhD degrees, joining a growing alumni community extending the program’s impact across academia, industry, and national laboratories. Alumni now hold positions at institutions including Purdue University Fort Wayne, High Point University, Bucknell University, and Saint Mary’s College; companies such as Seagate, Quix Quantum, and Faraday Technology; and national laboratories and government agencies including Lawrence Berkeley and Idaho National Laboratories, and the U.S. Department of War.
During the May 2023 MSE Program Faculty Retreat, the idea was introduced for all MSE students to take two common courses, one on materials characterization and the other on materials synthesis and processing. While similar courses had existed in the past, they weren’t being offered at the time. Professors Svetlana Neretina and Nirmal Ghimire developed and launched two new courses in their respective departments. Techniques in Materials Analysis: Understanding Structure and Properties was offered for the first time in Fall 2025, and Materials Synthesis and Processing was introduced in Spring 2026. The courses were designed to provide students entering the program from diverse academic backgrounds with a common materials foundation.
Techniques in Materials Analysis introduces students to Notre Dame’s core research facilities and the broad range of on-campus characterization capabilities available to support their research. Materials Synthesis and Processing provides students techniques and principles for making advanced materials. In their first year, both courses also received strong interest from students outside of the MSE program. Beyond establishing a strong foundation in materials science, these courses provide an opportunity for students to learn about each other’s research, build connections, and foster interdisciplinary collaboration from the beginning of the program.
We are encouraged by the continued growth of our MSE program and greatly appreciate your support in helping us attract more students. To learn more about Notre Dame’s Materials Science and Engineering graduate program, please visit mse.nd.edu.
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| Svetlana Neretina
Professor
Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering
Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry (concurrent)
MSE Academic Committee Chair (2024-2026)
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Research topics across the program
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The broad range of topics being explored by Notre Dame's Materials Science and Engineering students in their graduate research is illustrated in this word cloud. The size of each term reflects how frequently it appeared in their research descriptions.
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Grab a cup of coffee and take a minute to meet three of the students in Notre Dame’s MSE program. Jessica Komla is a fourth-year student in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. From the College of Science, Shih-Chun Lien is a fourth-year student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Linda Biondelli is currently finishing her third year in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. These students are among the 70+ students currently in the interdisciplinary program.
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| | Materials Research Society ND student chapter
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Many thanks to MSE students Bless Adjornor, Jacquelyn Sundstrom, and Bikram Ghosh (pictured) for their service as the 2025-2026 president, treasurer, and professional development chair, respectively, of the Materials Research Society Notre Dame student chapter. Recently, a new slate of officers was announced: Eibar Ortiz Ortega, Raul Chavez Ramirez, and Ajinkya Shingote will serve as chapter officers for the 2026-2027 academic year.
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| | Student Recognition: Fellowships, Graduates, Outstanding Paper awards!
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Ten students were supported by one-year fellowships from the MSE program for the 2025-2026 academic year. The fellowships support a wide range of collaborative materials research with the potential to generate proposals for external funding. Two students, Nileema Sharma and Yucheng Yang, were both recognized in May as recipients of the 2025 MSE Outstanding Paper award for papers they published in Nature Materials and Nature Communications, respectively. Yang was also among the six MSE students who graduated in the 2025-2026 academic year.
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| | Staying connected with MSE program alumni
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Two of the MSE program’s first graduates made campus visits to Notre Dame in 2026. Trevor Demille (‘21, PhD) (pictured), now with Quix Quantum in The Netherlands, and Robert Neal (‘22, PhD), currently with the U.S. Department of War, both met with MSE students during their visits to share their professional journeys.
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Svetlana Neretina, professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, has completed a two-year term as chair of the MSE program’s Academic Committee, which oversees the program’s interdisciplinary curriculum. Neretina will continue to serve on the committee, and Badih Assaf, associate professor of Physics and Astronomy, will now serve as committee chair.
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Abhijeet Nayak (Physics and Astronomy) was recognized for 100+ hours of mentorship as a part of Notre Dame’s Center for Broader Impacts 2025-2026 High School Research Internship program. The program provides local high school students with an opportunity to earn high school credit for conducting STEM research in a Notre Dame faculty lab. Abhijeet, who is advised by Nirmal Ghimire, was also a recipient of the IDEA Center’s Edison Innovation Fellowship for 2026-2027 academic year.
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In June, Jacquelyn Sundstrom (Chemistry and Biochemistry) was elected president of the Electrochemical Society Student Chapter at Notre Dame for the 2026-2027 academic year. Advised by Prashant Kamat, Jackie is also serving as Lab Safety Officer of the Kamat Lab.
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Nileema Sharma (Physics and Astronomy) is serving a second term as (founding) president of the Nepalese Student Association at Notre Dame (NSA@ND). Nileema, who is advised by Xiaolong Liu, was awarded both a Graduate School Professional Development Award at Notre Dame and an Ovshinsky Travel Award from the American Physical Society, to support her participation in the March 2026 APS Global Physics Summit in Denver, where she presented her work “Observation of symmetry-protected zero modes in single-flux-quantum vortex cores of UTe₂.”
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Jessica Komla (Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering) served as President of the CBE Graduate Student Organization Symposium Committee for the 2025-2026 academic year. Jessica is advised by Merlin Bruening.
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Matt Toole (Physics and Astronomy) received a spring 2026 fellowship from Notre Dame’s Scientific Artificial Intelligence (SAI) initiative; a Distinguished Research Award from the Department of Physics and Astronomy for his work “understanding spatially inhomogeneous superconductivity at the atomic scale and developing advanced data analysis tools”; and best poster award at the International Symposium on Quantum Fluids and Solids, for his poster, “Visualizing pair breaking scattering interference in Bulk FeSe.” Matt is advised by Xiaolong Liu.
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| Select Publications and Conference Presentations
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Featured below is a sampling of the work published and presented by students in the MSE program during the 2025-2026 academic year.
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Abhijeet Nayak, oral presentation, “Cr0.₅Ga0.₅Te₂: A near-room temperature semiconducting 2D van der Waals ferromagnet,” March APS Global Physics Summit (2026).
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Yuhan Liu, oral presentation, “Multi-objective active learning for discovering thermally conductive and mechanically compliant polymers,” MRS Spring Meeting & Exhibit (2026).
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Matt Toole, oral presentation, “Josephson interference in FeSe visualized at the atomic scale,” March APS Global Physics Summit (2026).
- Nileema Sharma, oral presentation, “Visualizing unconventional superconductivity with advanced scanning probes,” Physical Electronics Conference (2026).
- Debasish Panda, et al, “Template-confined synthesis of shape-engineered single-crystal gold microplates in lithographically-defined polymeric patterns,” Advanced Functional Materials, 36, 52 (2026).
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Yuhan Liu, et al, “Machine Learning in Nanoscale Thermal Transport,” Annual Review of Heat Transfer 23, 173-214 (2025).
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Matt Toole*, Nileema Sharma*, James McKenzie, et al, “Visualization pair-braking scattering interference in bulk FeSe,” Nano Letters 26, 10108-10114 (2026). *Equal contributors.
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Jacquelyn Sundstrom, et al, “Engineering excited-state dynamics in AgInS₂ quantum dots by gallium incorporation and GaSy shell passivation,” Chem. Mater. (2026) 38 (4): 1787–1796.
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Jacquelyn Sundstrom, poster, “Modulating photophysical properties of AgInS₂ quantum dots through gallium incorporation and GaSy shelling,” American Chemical Society Fall Meeting (2026).
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Faculty and Research Highlights
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Frozen neon as the key to a quiet quantum world, new study shows
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Notre Dame Engineering and Harvard Medical School collaborate on 4-year NIH project to create lab-grown organs
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Notre Dame Engineering faculty earn three consecutive CMBE Rising Star Awards (2024–26)
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| | NSL research sheds new light on Benjamin Franklin’s anti-counterfeiting technology
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Prashant Kamat Named 2025 Pioneer in Energy Research
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| | Smarter filter uses electric charges to target pollutants and recover resources
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Follow MSE LinkedIn Page!
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Stay updated on research highlights, opportunities, and the impactful work of our community!
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