Awards, Honors, and Recognitions

Danielle Cote, Harold L. Jurist ’61 and Heather E. Jurist Dean’s assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, has been named co-recipient of the 2023 Early Career Faculty Fellow Award by The Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society (TMS), a professional society. The award honors assistant professors for their achievements, their contributions to their academic institutions, and their abilities to advance the technological profile of TMS, an organization that connects materials scientists and engineers around the world. A member of the faculty since 2016, Cote, Russell M. Searle Instructor in Mechanical Engineering, has been awarded more than $25 million for her research and teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses. She will be honored during the TMS annual meeting in March in San Diego.

The National Science Foundation’s Division of Materials Research (DMR) named Germano Iannacchione, professor in the Department of Physics, as division director in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences. Iannacchione will lead a division that invests in the discovery, prediction, and design of new materials, the development of materials scientists, and a better understanding of materials. DMR programs support research and education in fields such as condensed matter physics, solid-state and materials chemistry, and materials that are ceramic, metallic, polymeric, nanostructured, biological, electronic, photonic, and multifunctional.

DMR also is the managing division for national facilities, such as the National High Magnetic Field Lab, the Center for High Resolution Neutron Scattering, the Cornell High-Energy Synchrotron Source, and the Materials Innovation Platforms, and for programs including the Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers and the cross-cutting Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer Our Future Program.

Jeannine Coburn, assistant professor in WPI’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been awarded a $606,146 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a transparent wound dressing that was inspired by a natural biopolymer she observed while fermenting kombucha at home. The prestigious CAREER Award recognizes early-career researchers and will support Coburn’s five-year project to expand fundamental knowledge about a stretchable and optically transparent cellulose produced by Komagataeibacter hansenii, a bacteria found in kombucha, vinegar, and other foods. Coburn will attach antimicrobial peptides to the cellulose to develop a material that can cover and treat a wound while remaining transparent so that health care workers can visually inspect a wound without exposing and disturbing vulnerable tissue.