In the News

Lithium-ion batteries today are nearly ubiquitous, powering everything from cell phones to laptops. Small wonder, then, that scientists are continually trying to develop safer and more energy-efficient battery technology. 

A research collaborative including UC Santa Barbara materials and mechanical engineer, battery expert Jeff Sakamoto, recently revealed key insights into solid electrolytes being tested for use in all-solid-state batteries.

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara and TU Dresden are blurring the lines between robotics and materials, with a proof-of-concept material-like collective of robots with behaviors inspired by biology.

Seven years ago, UC Santa Barbara researchers caught an unexpected phenomenon on film: A pool of red dye that somehow “knew” how to solve a maze filled with milk. Propelled forward by a couple drops of soap, it unerringly found its way, avoiding dead ends and even making 90 degree turns in its path toward the exit.

Donors, faculty, students and staff recently celebrated the opening of the modernized space

Emilie Dressaire, an assistant professor in the UCSB Mechanical Engineering Department, had an intimate look at the International Space Station (ISS) last year, spending time inside it via Zoom as she worked with an astronaut to fix a problem with one of nine onboard experiments she had sent to the ISS.

The Bolin Liao lab has achieved the first-ever “movie” of the phenomenon.

Mechanical engineer Yangying Zhu is among the first 13 academics to receive the inaugural IGNIITE grant

Team led by Bolin Liao has been awarded a $1.9M NSF grant on "AI-Enhanced Material-Device Codesign of Boron Arsenide as the Next-Generation Semiconductor". 

As water freezes, most of its dissolved gases get expelled. But some tiny bubbles near the freezing edge can get trapped in the solidifying ice, where they keep growing. Virgile Thiévenaz, who studies fluid mechanics at Paris’s Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Education Institute, and Alban Sauret, a mechanical engineer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, re-created this process in the laboratory to tease apart the factors that affect growing bubbles’ shapes and sizes.

Two professors in UC Santa Barbara’s College of Engineering, Beth Pruitt and M. Scott Shell, have received a distinguished lifetime honor within the scientific community: they have both been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), landing among 502 scientists, engineers and innovators across 24 disciplines who make up the 2023 class.