News & Updates

What a week at the 2025 MRS Fall Meeting! The conference was filled with very inspiring talks (including one by Nobel Laureate Prof. Omar Yaghi 🏅), exciting potential collaborations 🤝, and promising homes for upcoming papers 📄. It was also a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with colleagues, my scientific family, and former students 👩‍🔬👨‍🔬. A big THANK YOU to the organizers of the “Integrating Machine Learning and Simulations for Materials Modeling” symposium for the

Daniel Wagner, a star student in the M4L, has successfully defended his master’s thesis. His thesis, “Predicting Gait Kinematics in Youth with Cerebral Palsy Using Clinically Informed Machine Learning Algorithms,”  represents a major step forward at the intersection of medicine and engineering. In partnership with the prestigious Gait Lab at Nemours Children’s Hospital, Daniel developed clinically informed machine learning models capable of predicting how gait patterns evolve

Excited to share our first open-access article of 2025, just published in Scripta Materialia.  In this work with my talented students and postdocs  Md Rajib Khan Musa ,  Yichen Qian , and  Jie Peng , we propose a novel computational approach that integrates Monte Carlo (MC) sampling, first-principles DFT calculations, and machine learning techniques to accelerate the discovery of Minimum Energy Co­figurations (MECs), a critical step towards understanding the local chemical en

Tungsten (W) and W-based alloys are considered promising candidates for plasma-facing materials in future fusion energy devices. However,...

Shashwat Maharjan, Aasif Majeed, and Kritika Thakur, join the M4L Lab as PhD students. Welcome, Shashwat, Aasif, and Kritika!

Dr. Cereceda received the Junior Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching , which is presented to a faculty member who has developed...

Daniel Wagner, master student, joins the M4L Lab. He will be investigating the predictive factors in gait analysis for youth with...

Dr. David Cereceda is co-PI on a four-year, multi-institutional DOE SciDAC grant. Titled “ Integrated Thermomechanical Model of...

In this work, we present a computational approach that combines inventory codes and first-principles DFT electronic structure...

Jie Peng, postdoc, joins the M4L Lab. He will be studying the local changes in the chemical composition and the temperature effects of...

Md Rajib Khan Musa, postdoc, joins the M4L Lab. He will be studying the surface effects on tungsten-based plasma-facing materials through...

Prof. David Cereceda is the recipient of one of the 2022 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Office of Science Early Career Research...

Dr. David Cereceda has been awarded a two-year, $250K National Science Foundation grant. Titled “Unraveling the Surface Effects on...

Dr. Cereceda received the William F. Farrell Award during the recent Dean's Awards dinner on April 21, 2022. This award is given by the...

This work shows how to efficiently employ two data-driven approaches, spectral clustering and K-nearest neighbor classification (KNN), to...

Trevor Collins, a ME student pursuing her Bachellor of Science in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Mechatronics joins the M4L Lab....

Daniella Tagliaferri and Jessica Hoover, ME students pursuing their Bachellor degree at Villanova, join the M4L Lab. They will be working...

This work shows how ab initio materials modeling can predict the mechanical properties of transmuting tungsten under fusion power-plant...