Spring 2025 seminars have been announced,
& Summer 2025 internship application is open!
Come early for FREE FOOD!
No registration required.
Spring 2025 Seminars
Tuesday, February 11 | 6:00 PM | ACC Highland Campus, Bldg 1000, 2nd floor, Rm 1.2208
Wennie Wang | Assistant Professor, McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, UT-Austin
Embrace your imperfections: defects in materials for next-generation computers
ABSTRACT: Something that is defective is often considered undesirable, but in the world of semiconductors, defects are not only useful but also critical to how modern electronics like your laptop or smart phone function. In this talk, we will learn a bit about how one thinks about defects from a materials science perspective, why such defects are useful, and some ways we can engineer defects. We will end with a discussion of the new directions that materials science is taking towards making the next generation of electronic devices.

Monday, March 3 | 6:00 PM | ACC Highland Campus, Bldg 2000, 1st floor, Rm 2.1550
Cassandra Callman | Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, UT-Austin
Dr. Callman's research interests include materials science and nanoscience & nanotechnology
Research areas:
-
Synthetic Bottlebrush Glycopolymers
-
Galectin-Mediated Tumor Targeting
-
Immune Evasion with Carbohydrates

Dr. Callmann is a CPRIT Scholar in Cancer Research
Thursday, April 3 | 6:00 PM | ACC Highland Campus, Bldg 2000, 1st floor, Rm 2.1550
Alex Marras | Assistant Professor, Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering, UT-Austin
Dr. Marras' research interests include advanced materials science & engineering, biomechanical & biomedicine engineering, nano & micro-scale engineering, and thermal fluids systems & transport phenomena
Current research areas:
-
DNA-based nanosensors and actuators
-
Structural design of therapeutic nanoparticles
-
Responsive polymeric materials

Thursday, April 17 | 6:00 PM | ACC Highland Campus, Bldg 2000, 1st floor, Rm 2.1550
Dan Wasserman | Professor, Chandra Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UT-Austin
Dr. Wasserman's research interests include microelectronics & photonics and semiconductor lasers & photonic devices.
Current research areas:
-
Spectrally Tunable Infrared Sensing using Lithium Niobate Optomechanical Resonators
-
Atomic-scale Manipulations of Interband Optical Nonlinearities
-
Monolithic Integration of Optoelectronic and Plasmonic Materials for Mid-IR Optoelectronics
-
Metasurface-Enhanced Mid Wave Infrared Detectors
-
Mid-IR Quantum Dot LEDs
-
Semiconductor Heterostructure Platform for Active Hyperbolic Materials
-
Resonant RF Circuits for Infrared Detection and Material Metrology

Dr. Wasserman holds the Cullen Trust for Higher Education Endowed Professorship in Engineering #3.
Fall 2024 Seminars
Wednesday, November 6th | 6:00 PM | HLC 2.1550
Jean Anne Incorvia | Associate Professor, Chandra Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UT-Austin
Brain-Inspired Computing using Magnetic and Atomically Thin Materials
ABSTRACT: Neuromorphic computing is a new class of efficient computing for artificial intelligence that uses co-design from materials through devices, circuits, systems, and applications. The device requirements vary drastically depending on application, e.g. radiation-tolerant circuits for edge computing in space, and bio-compatible materials for in-sensor computing for medicine and health. I will present on our results using magnetic spin textures to function as artificial neurons that are noise-resilient, synapses that have high stability, and artificial neurons that can mimic higher-order neuronal functions. Turning to neuromorphic computing for health, I will show our results building artificial neurons and synapses from bio-compatible graphene. These results show the promise of an across-the-stack approach to computing AI tasks.

Dr. Incorvia has earned the Engineering Foundation Endowed Faculty Fellowship in Engineering
Thursday, November 14th | 6:00 PM | HLC 2.1550
Brian Belardi | Assistant Professor, McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, UT-Austin
Dynamic Synthetic Tissue: Controlling Junctional Assembly In Situ with Responsive Protein Switches
ABSTRACT: Multicellular tissue – the hallmark of all animals – exhibits an exquisite array of morphological structures and material properties. The three-dimensional geometries and physical properties of living tissue are, however, far from static as they can adapt and evolve during developmental programs and when exposed to biological insults. When compared to common organic and inorganic inanimate structures, tissues possess surprising characteristics that offer unique and distinct advantages as materials, including high surface area morphologies, active elasticity, long-distance communication, vectorial transport, and self-repair, for a wide range of applications. By dynamically tuning tissue’s physical properties, synthetic tissue would be a promising new form of smart implants, adhesives, filters, and protective coatings. However, the lack of tools to control tissue properties dynamically with user-defined inputs remains a bottleneck. Here, my lab presents a strategy for controlling synthetic tissue properties by manipulating junctional assembly in situ with responsive protein switches. While individual cells are considered the fundamental unit of tissue, it is the junctions and their cytoskeleton that define macroscopic tissue properties. In this presentation, we describe the use of intramolecular association to engineer protein switches capable of controlling actin binding at cell junctions, which we term controllable actin-binding switch tools (CASTs). After introduction of a stimulus, such as a peptide, small molecule, or light, the conformation of the CAST changes to yield a functional binding partner for actin. With different stimuli, we present switching activity on single minutes, tens of minutes, and hours long timescales. We also describe installing CASTs into native proteins at cell junctions, which enables the dynamic modulation of tissue properties.

Dr. Belardi is the holder of the Lyondell Chemical Company Endowed Faculty Fellowship in Engineering
Seminar Location​
​
Seminars are hosted at Austin Community College's Highland Campus (HLC):
​
6101 Highland Campus Dr.
Austin, TX 78752
​
For an interactive map of the campus, please go here: ACCHLC
​​
​For more info, please contact CREATE@cm.utexas.edu
![]() HLC Main |
---|
Click map to expand