RPI Materials Sci & Eng Community

Meeli Leith took some photos of our campus after the last snowstorm.
Isn't it pretty?

Materials and chemistry advances define the Milan Cortina games.

Chemistry gives Winter Olympic athletes an edge on the snow and ice From high-tech gear to PFAS-free waxes and precision ice making, materials and chemistry advances define the Milan Cortina games

The woman who made major contributions to Materials Science.

The chemical genius of Katharine Burr Blodgett The story of a woman whose discoveries in materials science quietly shape our everyday world but whose legacy was long eclipsed by the famous scientist she worked with at the General Electric Company

Check out our 2025 Newsletter - it is on our web site!

Materials Science and Engineering | Materials Science and Engineering With a focus in one of the most rapidly evolving academic disciplines, RPI’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering is home to nearly 120 undergraduate students and 60 graduate students. Research within the field meets an ever-increasing demand for solid materials from the designers of je...

https://news.rpi.edu/2025/07/29/professor-jian-shi-shares-perspective-unique-light-matter-interaction-promising-new

The campus looks so pretty in the summer, but we miss our students!

We are looking forward to seeing all of our undergrads back in the Materials Research Center this Fall!

Nimish Nazirkar and the Fohtung Research Group have had an article published in the journal Advanced Materials!

🚀 Thrilled to share our latest research published in Advanced Materials! 🧠⚡

Our work, "Manipulating Ferroelectric Topological Polar Structures with Twisted Light", explores how twisted ultraviolet light — light carrying orbital angular momentum — can be used to dynamically control topological polar structures like vortices, merons, and Bloch points in quasi-2D ferroelectrics.

By combining Bragg Coherent Diffractive Imaging (BCDI), Raman spectroscopy, and DFT, we demonstrated reversible and irreversible domain transformations in CsBiNb₂O₇ nanoflakes — opening new possibilities for non-volatile memory, straintronics, and light-driven devices.

Proud to contribute alongside an amazing team of collaborators at RPI, Argonne National Lab, and beyond.

Special thanks to my co-authors: Viet Tran, Pascal Bassène, Atoumane Ndiaye, Julie Barringer, Jie Jiang, Wonsuk Cha, Ross Harder, Jian Shi, Moussa N'Gom, and Edwin Fohtung.

🔗 Advanced Materials - Manipulating Ferroelectric Topological Polar Structures with Twisted Light

📄 Open Access in Advanced Materials

👥 Always open to connecting with others exploring light–matter interaction, topological materials, and quantum materials.

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We want to welcome our incoming Class of 2029 to the Materials Science & Engineering dept at RPI!

This image is how we see our RPI students.

Come visit the campus and see just how much we value our students.