Northwestern Engineering

The Spring 2026 Northwestern Engineering Magazine is now online and arriving in mailboxes.

This new issue highlights diverse pathways to mineral acquisition, 10 years of the Center for Synthetic Biology, and the evolution of the McCormick curriculum.

https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/magazine/spring-2026/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-post&utm_campaign=mcc-news-promotion&utm_content=___

Northwestern Engineering students are turning big ideas into real-world impact—and winning big.

Trevor Abbott and Quinn McGinley, both mechanical engineering students, took home the VentureCat 2026 Grand Prize — $100,000 for their startup HaptE, a computer vision system that catches ex*****on errors and optimizes warehouse operations in real time.

Abbott and McGinley were far from the only McCormick School of Engineering students honored. Read on to find out who else was recognized.

https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2026/05/mccormick-student-entrepreneurs-win-venturecat-grand-prize/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-post&utm_campaign=mcc-news-promotion&utm_content=___

Post-disaster reconstruction is rapidly increasing global demand for construction materials, which drives unsustainable resource extraction, poor debris management, and heightened environmental and climate impacts. A research team including

Professors Emeritus Stephen Carr and William Miller, Professor Jennifer Dunn, and Adjunct Professor Andreas Waechter suggested the implementation of coordinated global policy reforms and circular construction strategies—especially debris reuse, supply-chain planning, and sustainable materials governance—to guide post-disaster rebuilding.

Without systemic changes, reconstruction will intensify ecological degradation and emissions, but with better policies it can instead become a lever for climate-aligned, more resilient infrastructure development.

https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2026/05/rethinking-disaster-recovery/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-post&utm_campaign=mcc-news-promotion&utm_content=___

“We’re about to witness the meteoric rise of materials discovery, and this is just the start.”

Traditional materials discovery is slow and inefficient, relying on sequential trial-and-error methods that make it difficult to rapidly identify and optimize materials with targeted properties. Professor Chad Mirkin demonstrated that the use of “megalibrary” platforms to synthesize and screen millions of material candidates in parallel enables rapid discovery and intentional design of materials with specific performance characteristics.

This approach could dramatically accelerate materials innovation while also generating large, high-quality datasets needed to train AI systems for future materials discovery.

https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2026/05/megalibraries-in-pole-position-for-autonomous-discovery-over-self-driving-labs/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-post&utm_campaign=mcc-news-promotion&utm_content=___

Northwestern Engineering’s Junsoo Kim has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the foundation’s top honor for early-career faculty.

Kim will use the award to study why soft materials like gels and rubbers crack and wear out, with the goal of designing stronger, longer-lasting materials for applications such as medical devices, robotics, and flexible electronics.

Congrats, Junsoo!

https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2026/05/junsoo-kim-receives-nsf-career-award/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-post&utm_campaign=mcc-news-promotion&utm_content=___

Professor Sinan Keten has been awarded the 2026 Zdeněk P. Bažant Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Keten studies how soft materials behave and break, using computational models and machine learning to better understand polymers and biomolecular materials. His work supports the design of more durable materials for applications ranging from infrastructure to therapeutics.

https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2026/05/sinan-keten-wins-2026-zdenek-p-bazant-medal/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-post&utm_campaign=mcc-news-promotion&utm_content=___

Julio M. Ottino, Walter P. Murphy Professor and former dean, writes in Fast Company that as AI removes friction from decision-making, organizations risk losing the productive disagreement that drives innovation.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91543514/the-hidden-cost-of-ai-organizations-that-agree-too-fast

Professor Jennifer Fowlie has been named a CIFAR Global Scholar.

Fowlie is one of 15 early-career researchers selected from more than 450 applicants worldwide for the 2026–2028 cohort. The program connects researchers across disciplines and provides support to pursue new ideas and collaborations.

https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2026/05/jennifer-fowlie-named-a-cifar-scholar/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-post&utm_campaign=mcc-news-promotion&utm_content=___

Professor Jeffrey Richards has received the Arthur B. Metzner Early Career Award from the Society of Rheology.

The award recognizes researchers who have made significant contributions early in their careers. Richards’ work focuses on how soft materials deform and flow—and how those behaviors can be used to improve technologies for generating and storing energy.

https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2026/05/jeffrey-richards-wins-arthur-b-metzner-early-career-award/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-post&utm_campaign=mcc-news-promotion&utm_content=___

Computers today rely on moving electric charge—but that approach is running into limits in energy use and heat.

Professor James Rondinelli is exploring an alternative: controlling an electron’s spin using an electric field. Their work identifies nitride materials that combine electric and magnetic properties, which could enable devices that switch faster, use less power, and store information more efficiently.

These materials could help shape new kinds of memory and computing technologies.

https://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2026/05/electric-control-of-spin-could-enable-a-new-class-of-energy-efficient-electronics/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social-post&utm_campaign=mcc-news-promotion&utm_content=___