New Ph.D. Student, Walker Hicks, Joins ME² Lab (8/17/26)

Meet our newest group member, Walker Hicks! He joins us after doing his undergraduate studies in chemistry at Texas A&M. He will be primarily working on the alloy design side of our research as he gets started. You can read his full bio here.

Proposal Accepted for Prestigious DOE Genesis Project (7/22/26)

We are incredibly happy to announce that Dr. Silverstein’s proposal, written in collaboration with Dr. Gu, Dr. Spearot, and many more collaborators has been accepted as part of the DOE Genesis Mission! You can read the full story here, and stay tuned for upcoming papers and presentations showcasing the work we are doing as part of this initiative.

TMS Abstracts Accepted for Talks at TMS 2027 (7/21/26)

We are pleased to announce that Israel Reimer and Daniel Bolden’s abstracts have been accepted for talks at TMS! Their talks are titled “Oxygen-mediated phase
decomposition in group IV–Nb refractory alloys” and “Data-Driven Diffraction Libraries for Identifying Metastable States in Complex BCC Refractory Alloys” respectively.

TMS Abstracts Accepted for Posters at TMS 2027 (7/21/26)

We are pleased to announce that Daniel Bolden and Louis Katz’s abstracts have been accepted for posters at TMS! Their posters are titled “Mechanisms for Increasing Ductility in Thermomechanically Processed Refractory Alloys” and “Microstructural and Phase Evolution of Additively Manufactured Ni-Based Superalloy” respectively.

Israel Passes Qualifying exam (06/03/26)

We are thrilled to announce that Israel Reimer passed his qualifying exam with a proposal titled “Interstitial-Mediated Phase Decomposition in Chemically Complex Group IV-Based Refractory Alloys”. He is the first Ph.D. candidate in our group, and we are incredibly proud of him! (Photo from his celebration dinner.)

Arturo presents poster at uF’s undergraduate research symposium (4/9/26)

This past week, Arturo Zuniga-Hernandez presented the work he has done in our group this last year in a poster titled “Controlling High-Temperature Internal Oxidation in Refractory Multi-Principal Element Alloys (RMPEAs) via Getting Sites”. This work will be incredibly valuable to our research going forward, and we are so excited to see what he does next!

Dr. Silverstein Earns Prestigious national early career award from TMS (3/16/26)

We are incredibly excited to share that Dr. Silverstein was one of 3 recipients to be awarded the highly prestigious Early Career Leaders Professional Development Award from the Structural Materials Division at TMS 2026! Read the full article posted by our department here.

Arturo Accepted into REU at texas A&M (3/4/26)

This past spring, Arturo Zuniga-Hernandez was accepted into a highly competitive REU at Texas A&M. He will be working with the Sukhishvili group to investigate self-healing behavior in dynamic covalent polymer networks exposed to external stimuli. We are incredibly proud of him and look forward to seeing the work he does there!

TMS Abstract Accepted for Poster Presentation (1/13/26)

We are pleased to announce that Daniel Bolden and Louis Katz’s 2026 TMS abstract has been accepted for a poster presentation! The work, titled “A New Approach to Thermomechanical Processing of Brittle Refractory Alloys”, will showcase the new techniques being developed for the refractory rolling section of our group’s research.

TMS Abstract Accepted for Poster Presentation (9/7/25)

We are pleased to announce that Daniel Bolden and Louis Katz’s 2026 TMS abstract has been accepted for a poster presentation! The work, titled “High-Throughput, High-Fidelity Characterization of Complex Alloys via Machine Learning Driven 4D-STEM”, will showcase the post-processing work being done in the microscopy section of our group’s research.

Installation of PicoIndenter for Themis S-TEM (7/23/25)

Between 7/21/25 and 7/23/25, we hosted Laura Fleming from Bruker as she trained us to use their PI95 TEM PicoIndenter. This will allow our group to perform in-situ tensile tests of our materials inside of UF’s most capable TEM. We had a wonderful time with the training and look forward to seeing the results this new capability will give us! Special thanks to Dr. Nick Rudawski from the NRF for his time and assistance during this training.

TMS Abstract Accepted for Oral Presentation (7/18/25)

We are pleased to announce that Israel Reimer’s 2026 TMS abstract has been accepted for an oral presentation! This abstract, titled “Mechanical Effects of Interstitial-Induced Metastability in Group IV-Based Refractory Alloys” will be the first work presented by a graduate student in Dr. Silverstein’s research group.

Latest update about our laboratory (1/9/26)

Our furnaces are being installed and wired up!