| Date | Speaker | Title | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
1977, May 5 | John Wulff | Hynes Stellite 21— The History of an American Alloy | 6-120 4-5, refreshments at 3:30 |
| 1978, May 4 | Cyril Stanley Smith | The Structure of All Things | |
| 1979, April 19 | William O. Baker Bell Telephone Laboratories | New Technologies from Solid State Chemistry and Physics | |
| 1981, April 24 | John O'M. Bokris Texas A&M | Solar Hydrogen Economy | 10-250 4:00, Refreshments at 3:00 |
| 1983, March 29 | Pierre Aigrain Minister of Research, France | Careers in Electronic Materials | 6-120 3:30-5:00. Refreshments |
| 1983, March 30 | Kenneth Johnson Bell Laboratories | Careers in Electronic Materials | 6-120 3:30-5:00. Refreshments |
| 1984 | Byron Lichtenberg Payload Systems, Inc. | Materials Science Opportunities in Space | |
| 1985, April 11 | Kurt Nassau AT&T Bell Labs | Crystals for Electronics, Optics, and Gems | 10-250 4:15. Refreshments to follow. |
| 1986, December 10 | David C. Hill Allied Corporation | Order and Chaos in the Field of Materials | |
| 1988, April 7 | Robert A. Laudise AT&T Bell Labs | Crystals for Fun and Profit | 8-314 (Chipman Room) 12-1 |
| 1995, November 26 | Bonnie J. Dunbar NASA Astronaut | Materials Processing in Space | 10-250 4:00. Reception to follow. |
| 1996, December 4 | Rustum Roy Penn State | Materials: Research, Education, and Service Realignment of Focus: Outward | 10-250 3:30. Refreshments at 3:00. |
| Materials are central to much science and engineering for all of society, from highest tech companies to the citizens' concerns about hazardous waste. Traditionally, the Materials Science and Engineering community was driven from the inner recesses of fundamental science outwards to applications engineering, technology, and a compliant public. In the new millennium all science must do an about face and be pulled by applications, the marketplace, and ultimately the public's needs. Traditional measures of performance will be replaced increasingly by "cheaper, greener, and faster" as the important criteria for much materials research. | |||
| 1997, November 18 | Michael Rubner | Controlling Structure One Molecular Layer at a Time | 34-101 4:00. Refreshments at 3:30. |
| There is currently a great deal of interest in controlling the structure and composition of materials and surfaces at the nanoscale level. This is particularly true for optically and electronically active polymers where it is anticipated that the unique properties of these materials can be successfully tailored at the molecular level if suitable techniques are developed to manipulate and control the manner in which they organize in the solid state and on surfaces. We have recently developed a new layer-by-layer molecular self-assembly process that can be used to fabricate multilayer thin films of polymers. This very simple approach, which involves the sequential adsorption of polyions from dilute aqueous solutions, can be used to coat a wide variety of polymeric and nonpolymeoic substrates with many different functionally active polymers. Since the polymer film is fabricated one molecular level at a time, it is also possible to build heterostructure thin films with complex molecular architectures and thickness that are controllable at the molecular level. It will be demonstrated that this new nanoscale approach to the processing of polymers into thin films can be used to fabricate a wide variety of electronically active thin films including light emitting devices, transparent-electrically conductive thin films, and photovoltaic devices. In addition, this approach can be used to systematically control the surface properties of materials via a simple molecular level blending process. The fabrication and properties of nano composites based on polymer/inorganic nanocrystallite multilayer thin films will also be discussed. | |||
| 1998, November 5 | James D. Livingston | Magnets through the Ages (from lodestones to neos) | 34-101 2:30. Refreshments at 2:00. |
| Computer disk drives, compact earphones, cordless power tools, and many other items of modern technology depend on powerful and recently-developed "neo" (neodymium-iron-boron) magnets. Yet natural magnets (lodestones) were used in China in a compass-like device as early as 200 BC, and, with iron poles to concentrate their magnetic flux, later used by Columbus, Drake and others to navigate the oceans. Steel magnets more powerful than lodestones were crucial to Bell and Edison in the early years of the electrical industry, and were use in 1898 in the first magnetic recorders. Alnico magnets more powerful that steels were the basis of the microwave radar systems that helped the Allies win World War II, and ferrite and rare-earth magnets later surpassed the alnicos. We'll discuss the history, legends, science and technology of magnetic materials through the ages— from the Lodestone Age to today's Neo Age. | |||
| 2000, November 15 | Robert J. Cava Princeton | New Materials: The Plankton of the Technological Food Chain | 26-100 3:00. Refreshments at 2:00. |
| The fields of chemistry and materials science are becoming more and more closely intertwined, resulting in one of the most active and dynamic branches of current interdisciplinary scientific research. One way an interdisciplinary materials chemistry program can be implemented is based on finding new chemical compounds to meet the materials needs of current, emerging, or future technologies. New materials also have a great impact in the study of complex phenomena in condensed matter physics. Without the continuing discovery and development of new materials, progress in the development of technological systems and research in condensed matter physics would slow down dramatically. In this talk I will present some examples from our own work showing how materials chemistry can impact both the frontiers of technology development and advances in basic science. | |||
| 2002, November 26 | Colin Humphreys Cambridge University | The Magic of Materials: from Metals with a Memory to Brilliant New Lasers | 6-120 4:30. Refreshments at 4:00. |
| 2004, November 18 | Darrell Irvine | Using Materials to Engineer Biology | 54-100 3:00. Refreshments to follow. |
| 2005, February 24 | Thomas Theis T.J. Watson Research Center | Nanotechnology and the Future of Information Technology | 6-120 4:00. Refreshments to follow. |
| Information technology has prospered as scientists and engineers have learns to make "bits" ever smaller. Current manufacturing processes cannot build much structure into an object at a length scale less than the minimum lithographic dimension of 90 nm, but there is no physical reason we cannot learn to design and build objects with complex structure defined on all length sales down to the atomic scale. Opinions on how this might be done are often divided into apparently conflicting camps – "top down" versus "bottom up," lithography versus chemical synthesis, "molecular assemblers" versus "self-assembly". None of these distinctions is very meaningful from the point of view of physics. What is meaningful is the error rate with which structural information can be imparted to an object by some dynamical process. "Digital" processes, with a few energetically accessible states, can have very low error rates, but tend to be energetically costly. "Analog" processes, with many accessible energy states, have higher error rates, but can be very energy efficient. Both types of information transfer are discernible in every manufacturing process. Above the scale of the minimum lithographic dimension, lithography is inherently digital. Chemical syntheses tends to be analog. The trick is to combine the two modes of imparting structural information so that the complex, hierarchically-organized systems of information technology can be manufactured at minimum cost. Conventional optical lithography won't allow us to impart structural information at the atomic and molecular scale, but scanning-pre and other emerging lithographic processes will. Current research in nanostructured materials and devices suggests how lithographic processes can be increasingly combined with near-equilibrium chemical synthetic processes to produce the devices of information technology. Over the next few decades, it should become possible to design and control the structure of an object on all length scales, from the atomic to the macroscopic, and to do so cheaply and reliably in manufacturing. | |||
| 2005, November 8 | Ned Thomas | Science for the Soldier | 10-250 3:30. |
The US Army has established a $10m/year center at MIT for basic research, transitioning, and outreach in nano materials and nanotechnology to enable revolutionary advances in soldier protection and survivability. The ISN is the single largest and most visible nanotechnology effort at MIT and a cornerstone for further growth in this important area. The key soldier capabilities that the ISN seeks to investigate are:
The center is comprised of ~35 Faculty from 8 departments, co-supervising ~90 Grad Students, and ~25 Post Docs with researchers from industry and the Army. Founding industrial partners are Raytheon, DuPont and Partners Health Care(Brigham and Womens and Mass General Hospitals). This talk will describe the approach being used to create a team of MIT/Industry/Army for unprecedented protection of Soldiers using systems of nano systems. | |||
| 2006, November 7 | Ulrich Dahmen LBNL | Electron Microscopy as a Window on the Nanoworld | 34-101 4:30. Reception to follow. |
| 2007, March 20 | Don Sadoway | Electrochemical Pathways Towards Sustainability | 10-250 4:00. Reception to follow. |
| 2007, October 17 | Alan Taub R&D, General Motors | Materials Challenges for a Sustainable Automotive Industry | 4-370 4:30. Reception to follow. |
Fuel economy requirements, emissions regulations, concerns about global climate, and the push for energy independence are key factors impelling the auto industry to develop more sustainable vehicles. Achieving sustainability requires cutting-edge innovation in virtually every area of automotive technology, including advanced propulsion, lightweight and smart materials, electronics, controls and software, and telematics. As the industry works to integrate these new, more revolutionary technologies into the vehicle, it has become increasingly apparent that many of the major challenges to their implementation are materials related. This talk will highlight the most promising technology options and approaches and discuss the major materials issues in each area. | |||
| 2008, March 18 | Krystyn Van Vliet | Scratching below the Surface: Material Metastability Enables Engineering Solutions | 6-120 4:30. Reception to follow. |
| Coupling between the chemical and mechanical states of materials enables applications such as actuators and transducers, defines the environmental susceptibility of mechanical stiffness and strength, and facilitates all biological processes in cells including adhesion to extracellular materials, migration, and differentiation. The Van Vliet Laboratory for Material Chemomechanics studies this chemomechanical coupling in a range of material systems including supersaturated metal alloys, nanoscale amorphous oxides, synthetic polymer thin films, and living mammalian cells and microbes. Prof. Van Vliet will discuss recent progress in the nanoscale experiments and computational simulation of three such material systems, and share what her group has learned about the challenges of modeling and understanding material behavior at surfaces and interfaces that are far from equilibrium. | |||
| 2008, November 17 | Yoel Fink | From Fiber Optic Surgical Scalpels to Fabrics That See: How Materials Scientists are Shaping the Future | 10-250 4:45. Reception to follow. |
| 2009, March 31 | Chris Schuh | Harder, Cheaper, Greener: Materials Science and Engineering of Nanocrystalline Coatings | 26-100 5:00. Reception to follow. |
| In Materials Science and Engineering, basic principles can lead directly to new engineering products that are better, cheaper, and greener. Prof. Schuh will describe the connection between scientific thinking and engineering practice in the area of hard metal coatings. Specifically, he will address the replacement of classical technologies that have significant environmental drawbacks, with a new class of environmentally-friendly coatings. To do so requires the development of a new processing science to control material structure at the nanometer-scale. | |||
| 2009, November 17 | Michael Rubner | Nature Inspired Materials Science | 10-250 4:00. Reception to follow. |
| Materials Scientists more and more are looking to nature for clues on how to create highly functional materials with exceptional properties. The fog harvesting capabilities of the Namib Desert beetle, the beautiful iridescent colors of the hummingbird, and the super water repellant abilities of the Lotus leaf are but a few examples of the amazing properties developed over many years in the natural world. Nature also makes extensive use of the pH-dependent behavior of weak functional groups such as carboxylic acid and amine functional groups. The pH-gated opening and closing of the carboxylate-lined cages of the cowpea chlorotic mottle virus, for example, is an important element of the infection process. This presentation will explore synthetic mimics to the nano- and microstructures responsible for these fascinating properties. For example, we have demonstrated a pH-induced porosity transition that can be used to create porous films with pore sizes that are tunable from the nanometer scale to the multiple micron scale. The pores of these films, either nano- or micropores, can be reversibly opened and closed by changes in solution pH. The ability to engineer pH-gated porosity transitions in heterostructure thin films has led to the demonstration of broadband anti-reflection coatings that mimic the anti-reflection properties of the moth eye and pH-tunable Bragg reflectors with a structure and function similar to that found in hummingbird wings. In addition, the highly textured honeycomb-like surfaces created by the formation of micron-scale pores are ideally suited for the creation of superhydrophobic surfaces that mimic the behavior of the self-cleaning lotus leaf. Techniques to create patterned superhydrophobic/superhydrophilic surfaces have also been developed that make it possible to create planar open microfluidic channels as well as fog-harvesting coatings that mimic the behavior of the Namib Desert beetle. | |||
| 2010, April 13 | Caroline Ross | Magnetic Materials Science: How magnets help us explore and record the world | 1-190 4:30. Reception to follow. |
Materials Science is all about understanding the properties of materials, and how we can control them. This talk will show how magnetic materials have evolved, from natural magnets (lodestone and meteorites) to synthetic magnets with amazing properties, such as super-strong magnets, transparent magnets, nanosized magnets, or magnets that can be controlled with electric fields or mechanical deformation. The materials that have enabled modern life- the compass in your cell phone, hard disk drives, electric motors, power transformers, and medical diagnostics and treatments – all rely on magnetic materials. | |||
| 2010, November 17 | Gerd Ceder | Computationally Designing Materials for the Clean Energy Environment | 32-123 5:00. Reception to follow. |
| The need for novel materials is the technological Achilles Heel of our strategy to address the energy and climate problem facing the world. The large-scale deployment of photovoltaics, photosynthesis, storage of electricity, thermoelectrics, or reversible fuel catalysis cannot be realized with current materials technologies. The "Materials Genome" project, started at MIT, has as its objective to use high-throughput first principles computations on an unparalleled scale to discover new materials for energy technologies. I will show successful examples of high-throughput calculations in the field of lithium batteries and discuss other materials challenges in the energy field. | |||
| 2011, March 29 | Angela Belcher | Giving New Life to Materials for Energy, Electronics, and the Environment | 10-250 4:00. Reception to follow. |
| There are many properties of living systems that could be harnessed by researchers to make advanced technologies that are smarter, more adaptable, and are synthesized to be compatible with the environment. One approach to designed future technologies is to evolve organisms to work with a more diverse set of building blocks. These materials could address many scientific and technological problems in electronics, military, medicine, and energy applications. Examples include a virus-enabled lithium ion rechargeable battery that has many improved properties over conventional batteries, as well as materials for solar and display technologies. | |||
| 2011, November 8 | Lorna Gibson | Cellular Materials in Engineering, Nature, and Medicine | 10-250 4:30. Reception to follow. |
| Engineering honeycombs and foams, wood, plant stems and leaves, trabecular bone (a porous type of bone), and tissue engineering scaffolds all have a cellular structure that gives rise to unite properties that are exploited in engineering and in medicine. Nature, too, uses cellular materials to provide structural support as well as to conduct fluids This talk illustrates the wide range of cellular materials and describes how they are used in engineering, nature, medicine. | |||
| 2012, April 12 | John Rogers UIUC | A Stretchy, Curvy Future for Electronics | 32-123 4:30. Reception to follow. |
Biology is curved, soft and elastic; silicon wafers are not. Semiconductor technologies that can bridge this gap in form and mechanics will create new opportunities in devices that adopt biologically inspired designs or require intimate integration with the human body. This talk describes the development of ideas for electronics that offer the performance of state-of-the-art, wafer-based systems but with the mechanical properties of a rubber band. We explain the underlying principles in materials science and mechanics that enable these outcomes, and illustrate their use in bio-integrated,‘tissue-like’ electronics with unique capabilities in mapping neural activity on the brain and monitoring physiological status through the skin. Demonstrations in humans and live animal models illustrate the functionality offered by these technologies, and suggest several clinically relevant applications. | |||
| 2013, April 9 | Jennifer Lewis Harvard | Printing Functional Materials | 26-100 4:00. Reception following. |
The ability to pattern functional materials in planar and three-dimensional forms is of critical importance for several emerging applications, including printed electronics, self-healing materials, and tissue engineering scaffolds. 3D printing enables one to rapidly design and fabricate materials in arbitrary shapes without the need for expensive tooling, dies, or lithographic masks. In this talk, I will describe the design and rheological properties of model and functional inks as well as their implementation in 3D printing of (1) microelectrodes for pen-on-paper electronics, flexible photovoltaics, and electrically small antennas, (2) hydrogel matrices with embedded microvascularization and (3) 3D hydrogel scaffolds for tissue engineering. Finally, recent advances in high throughput printing of materials via multinozzle arrays will be highlighted. | |||
| 2013, November 12 | Don Sadoway | Electrochemical Pathways Towards Sustainability | 10-250 4:00. Reception following. |
| Imagine a process that produces metal in such a way that the trees are greener in the vicinity of the smelter, that the water is cleaner downstream from the smelter. Imagine an electric vehicle that is superior in performance and competitively priced to one fueled by petroleum. Imagine drawing electricity from the sun even when the sun isn't shining. Professor Sadoway believes that there are electrochemical technologies capable of meeting all of these challenges. | |||
| 2014, April 16 | David Weitz Harvard | Dripping, jetting, drops, and wetting: the magic of microfluidics | 54-100 4:00. Reception following. |
This talk will discuss the use of microfluidic devices to precisely control the flow and mixing of fluids to make drops, and will explore a variety of uses of these drops. These drops can be used to create new materials that are difficult to synthesize with any other method. These materials have great potential for use for encapsulation and release and for drug delivery and for cosmetics. I will also show how the exquisite control afforded by microfluidic devices provides enabling technology to use droplets as microreactors to perform reactions at remarkably high rates using very small quantities of fluids. I will demonstrate how this can be used for new fundamental and technological applications. | |||
| 2014, November 18 | Jeff Grossman | Hey, Atoms: What Have You Done for Me Lately? | 10-250 4:00. Reception following. |
| Understanding, inventing, and engineering mechanisms and materials for energy production, energy storage, and energy transport are among the greatest challenges of the 21st century. Materials-driven advances are key to technologies that counter the deleterious environmental and political impacts of the world's long-standing reliance on fossil fuels. Current renewable energy conversion and storage technologies are either too expensive or too inefficient or both. Materials science and engineering is at the core of the energy challenge: many key mechanisms that convert and store energy are dominated by the intrinsic properties of the active materials involved. Our imperative is to predict, identify, and manufacture new materials as comprehensively and rapidly as possible to enable game-changing forward leaps rather than our current path of incremental advances. This lecture will discuss the impact of materials design on the energy world. | |||
| 2016, April 5 | Charlie Kuehmann VP Materials Engineering, Tesla and SpaceX | Save the Planet or Leave It? Let’s Do Both! How materials engineering will usher in the future | 10-250 4:00 Reception following |
Since prehistory, human development has been tied to its ability to work with materials, represented by the stone, copper, bronze, and iron ages that mark civilization’s progress. In modern times, understanding the physical world sped materials discovery and the advance of technology. New alloys, ceramics, polymers, and composites led to tremendous innovation in transportation, agriculture, modern cities, and the ability to harness natural resources. New materials enabled the transistor that unleashed computational power. A revolution is beginning: Aided by computational power and materials modeling capabilities, materials science and engineering is poised to lead innovations that will address the desperate environmental conditions created by our past successes. This materials revolution will enable humanity to loose the shackles of fossil fuels and grow beyond the confines of planet earth. Dr. Charlie Kuehmann has been a leader in computational materials design since its inception. A founder of the first company dedicated to this technology, he has implemented it to create materials and alloys, from high-performance steels for race cars, aluminum alloys for aircraft, high-temperature alloys for turbine engines, and even bubble-gum. Dr. Kuehmann brought this revolutionary technology first to the consumer electronics industry and now to electric vehicles and spacecraft. He leads materials engineering at both Tesla and SpaceX, driving material innovations to enable a sustainable future, the commercialization of space, and a multi-planetary civilization. | |||
| 2016, November 18 | Gene Fitzgerald | Changing the World through Materials Innovation | 10-250 4:00 Reception following.
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| Materials innovation is a powerful change-agent. Historical synopses show atomic and structural control of materials is a fundamental aspect of human progress. More mysterious is the real process of innovation behind this progress as it is occurring, and how an individual’s research or work in materials leads directly to market impact. In this lecture, the author presents a personal journey from starting as an MIT undergraduate in Materials Science and Engineering, experiencing discovery of important phenomenon in semiconductor materials, and founding enterprises to drive innovation into the marketplace. The lecture finishes with his center’s current activity in MIT’s Singapore research hub, SMART, and their goal of enabling the integrated circuits of the future. | |||
| 2017, April 12 | Dan Button AIRY:3D, Inc. President and CEO (DMSE alum) | Start-Ups in Materials: If you're not on the edge, you're taking up too much space | 10-250 4:00 Reception following |
Building materials-based companies can change the world and generate tremendous financial reward—but it's hard. Consider this a chance to learn lessons in the new materials venture arena from a veteran of far-reaching new materials businesses—some in Fortune 500 companies like DuPont and Corning, and many spun out of MIT and other leading universities. He will share advice and experiences learned from launching VC-financed start-ups and bringing to market new technologies that have become industry standards. Several featured breakthrough materials technologies have changed the world, particularly in consumer electronics and automotive industries. | |||
| 2017, November 6 | Lorna Gibson | Fantastic Feathers: Form and Function | 10-250 4:00 Reception following |
| When we think of birds, we think of feathers. Feathers give birds their color, from the bright red of a male Cardinal to the iridescent reds and greens of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. Feathers keep birds warm and dry: down provides excellent insulation against heat loss and water really does roll off a duck's back. Feather form the aerodynamic shape of the wing, enabling light. A Barn Owl's flight feathers suppress sound, allowing it to fly nearly silently, while its ruff feathers reflect and focus sound into its ears, enabling the owl to hunt in total darkness by sound alone. This talk describes how the microscopic structure of feathers gives rise to their remarkable properties. | |||
| 2018, March 20 | Mark Miodownik University College London | Stuff Matters | 34-101 4:00 Reception following |
21st-century materials science is now making possible a world where buildings harvest their own energy, bridges repair themselves, clothes increase life expectancy by monitoring health. But many alternative realities are possible, each driven by different cultural and economic forces. We could find ourselves dealing with seas full of plastic, declining life expectancy, and energy black-outs. Which future will we choose? In this lecture, Professor Mark Miodownik argues that only a deeper understanding of materials science will allow us to navigate the future successfully. Professor Miodownik is a best-selling author, broadcaster, and innovative thinker who has been bringing new ideas in materials science to the general public for decades. His many awards and honors include the Communication Awards of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. | |||
| 2018, November 19 | Sam Shames '14, embr labs | Navigating a Material World | 6-120 4:00 Reception following |
What happens when the lessons from Course 3 are taken outside of the classroom and into the real world? This lecture will share the personal story of a DMSE undergraduate’s journey from student to entrepreneur, as a co-founder of Embr Labs. The startup began as a first-place $10,000 prize MADMEC project in 2013, and has grown into an 11-person company with customers in over 75 countries. The talk will cover the materials science behind Embr Lab’s heating and cooling wristband; what the speaker wished he knew when he started at MIT; and how the principles of materials science can help anyone make their time at MIT matter. | |||
| 2019, April 10 | Frances Ross | Funny Microscope Videos: Transmission Electron Microscopy in Motion | 6-120 4:00 Reception following |
We can watch crystals grow in the electron microscope by slowly adding atoms to a clean surface. The movies tell us about kinetics and thermodynamics but can also be entertaining, frustrating, or both at the same time. I will attempt to share the joy of this “in situ” microscopy as we aim to understand how atoms assemble into nanowires or nanocrystals and use the information to control the formation of more complex nanostructures. | |||