Everything is made of something.
Making a more sustainable and healthier world starts with imagining new materials. Everything from renewable energy to medical devices to consumer electronics can be advanced by improving the materials they are made from.
Our Programs
Studying the properties of materials and their applications is ideal for those who are excited to work at the forefront of industries like electronics, energy, and healthcare.
Strategic Areas of Research
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![Eric Dufresne Research image of Droplets]()
Bioinspired Materials and Systems
Bioinspired composites, engineered protein films for adhesion, lubrication and sensing applications, molecular tools for in-vitro and in-vivo imaging, and biomaterials for tissue engineering and drug delivery.
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![Andrej Singer Research Image of bright spectrum of colors across a rectangle]()
Electronics and Photonics
Oxide semiconductors, 3D integration, materials beyond silicon, high K and low K dielectrics, plasmonics, spintronics and multiferroics.
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![Research Image from Julia Dshemuchadse's group]()
Energy Production and Storage
Photocatalysis, photovoltaics, thermoelectrics, phononics, batteries and supercapacitors.
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Green Technologies
We have targeted green composites and new systems for CO2 capture and conversion as areas of future growth.
News Highlights
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Supersonic tests defy a 70-year-old rule of metal strength
Smaller grains – the microscopic crystal regions within the material – normally make metal stronger, but when deformed at extreme speeds, this rule flips and metals with very small grains actually become softer, new Cornell research reveals.
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Cornell-developed particles supercharge cancer immunotherapy
A class of ultrasmall fluorescent core-shell silica nanoparticles developed at Cornell is showing an unexpected ability to rally the immune system against melanoma and dramatically improve the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy.
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Robotics, exoplanets, quantum theory earn Research Excellence Awards
Revealing how psychiatric drugs reshape the brain and designing next-generation missions to find distant worlds are among the research themes that helped faculty earn Cornell Engineering Research Excellence Awards, the college’s highest recognition for groundbreaking scientific impact.
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Aluminum nitride transistor advances next-gen RF electronics
Cornell researchers have developed a new transistor architecture that could reshape how high-power wireless electronics are engineered, while also addressing supply chain vulnerabilities for a critical semiconductor material.
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Cornell CNF annual meeting spotlights breakthroughs in nanofabrication
Cornell’s NanoScale Science and Technology Facility (CNF) convened researchers, industry partners, and national collaborators for its 2025 Annual Meeting on November 18, highlighting advances across photonics, quantum devices, semiconductor fabrication, sustainability, and life sciences.
Upcoming Events
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MSE Seminar: Robert Nemanich (Arizona St.)
Epitaxial growth of c-BN on Diamond, an Ultra-Wide Bandgap Heterostructure Cubic boron nitride (c-BN) is an ultra-wide bandgap semiconductor with properties similar to diamond and appropriate for high…
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MSE Seminar: Richard Register (Princeton)
How Many Tie Chains are Needed for a Semicrystalline Polymer to be Ductile? Semicrystalline polymers of low glass transition temperature, such as polyethylene (PE) and hydrogenated polynorbornene (hPN…
