Interim Chair and Alumni Professor
Dear alumni, colleagues and friends,
Welcome to the fall newsletter for the Department of Materials Science & Engineering. It has been a busy semester with compelling research, student activities and faculty honors.
In this newsletter, you’ll read about associate professor Victoria Miller, Ph.D., and her team’s exploration of manufacturing precision metal structures in orbit using laser technology. “We want to build big things in space,” Miller says, and her team is partnering with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center to do just that.
We also peek into the lab of MSE assistant professor Megan Butala, Ph.D., who is working to enable a unique way to look at the atomic structure of thin films on single-crystal substrates. Ultimately, this can lead to smarter, faster and sustainable electronics.
Meanwhile, our East Campus is housing our new — and quite large — MSE superconducting magnet that could advance metal production and position the United States as a global leader in alloy production. This has the potential to significantly reduce the cost and energy use of heat treatments in the steel industry.
This newsletter showcases our Nuclear Engineering department, which, in June, hosted hundreds of students, professors and national laboratory scientists and engineers for the 2025 National Nuclear Security Administration R&D University Program Review. There, on our campus amid timely nuclear concerns overseas, attendees focused on global security and scientific collaboration.
Speaking of nuclear engineering, we congratulate Associate Professor Kyle C. Hartig, Ph.D., who was recently named to the American Nuclear Society’s (ANS) Nuclear News 40 Under 40 list.
And then there are our recent graduates who earned their nuclear reactor operator license through UF’s training reactor program this year, joining an elite group of students trained to run one of the few university reactors in the country. These three graduates paint a vivid picture of working in this unique facility and what it taught them.
There is much more in this newsletter, which is a testament to the hard work, success and reputation of MSE. We look forward to much more in 2026.
Sincerely,
Michael Tonks
Interim Chair and Alumni Professor, Materials Science and Engineering