Materials Science & Engineering

We celebrated graduating MSE students and department award winners on Monday, and look forward to honoring our graduates again tomorrow morning at the College of Engineering commencement ceremony!

2026 department award winners:

Outstanding Research: Yury Gogotsi
Outstanding Service: Jill Wenderott
Outstanding Teaching: Steve May
Outstanding Staff: Sarit Kunz
Outstanding Graduate Student: Mohamed Ibrahim, Teng Zhang and Leo Zhang
Outstanding Undergraduate Student: Alessandra Cabrera and Hans Geiser

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering had plenty to celebrate at Drexel Engineering's Celebration of Engineering!

🏆 Senior Design Championship Competition (2nd Place)
Alessandra Cabrera, Evelyn Carpenter, and Lucy Plant for Photothermal Desalination for Efficient, Energy-Cheap Freshwater Production

🥇 Senior Design General Competition (1st Place)
Sarah Cassidy, Joe Heston, and Conway Zheng for Poly-L-Lactic Acid Crystalsomes Formed in Environmentally Sustainable Nanoemulsions for Biomedical Applications

MSE students in attendance who received prestigious Drexel Engineering awards, fellowships, and national honors were also recognized at the event:

⭐ Alessandra Cabrera – Fulbright U.S. Student Award & Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award
⭐ Leo Zhang – Outstanding Graduate Student Award
⭐ Carl Furner – Koerner Family Award
⭐ Yash Athreya – Joseph and Shirley Carleone Endowed Fellowship
⭐ Yuanren Liu – Joseph and Shirley Carleone Endowed Fellowship
⭐ Shichen Yu – Paul Lemmo Award

Congratulations to all of our students on an outstanding year of innovation, research, and achievement!

The recently announced Drexel 40 under 40 includes three extremely accomplished young MSE alums: Zikria Saif (BS ’25), Kyle Matthews (PhD ’24) and Steven Spurgeon (PhD ’14). Read all about their amazing achievements in the latest issue of Drexel Magazine https://drexelmagazine.org/story/40-under-40-2026/