Nitin Padture, the Otis E. Randall University Professor of Engineering at Brown, has received a Humboldt Research Award.

Research by Brown University engineers sheds new light on how sodium behaves inside these batteries, providing new design specifications for anode materials that maximize stability and energy density for sodium-ion batteries.

Brown University’s Joan Wernig Sorensen Professor of Engineering Yue Qi has been elected to the class of 2026 Fellows by the Materials Research Society (MRS). She joins Nitin Padture (2023) and Subra Suresh (2008) as Brown faculty members who are Fellows of the MRS. She joins Nitin Padture (2023) and Subra Suresh (2008) as Brown faculty members who are Fellows of the MRS.

The 5 Sigma Physicist honor recognizes APS members who demonstrated substantial, impactful advocacy actions with APS Government Affairs.

Assistant Professor Joy Zeng, the newest chemical engineering professor to join the Brown School of Engineering, recognized the fundamental link between chemistry and nature even before she knew how to put it into words.

Associate Professor Feng Lin’s laboratory in Brown University’s School of Engineering leads pioneering studies using advanced materials and cell diagnostics analyses to systematically elucidate the degradation behavior of battery materials. B

Yue Qi, the Joan Wernig Sorensen Professor of Engineering at Brown University and member of ISE executive committee has received the 2025 Ross Coffin Purdy Award from The American Ceramic Society for a 2023 Nature Communications research paper. Presented annually, the Purdy honors the most valuable technical contribution to ceramic literature published two years prior. There were two awarded papers in 2025.

Fermi Energy, a startup which develops high-performance cathode materials for next-generation batteries, was pitched by Lin’s CEO and co-founder Zhengrui “Ray” Xu.

Fundamental scientific questions drive Lin Lab tech advancements

Nitin Padture who leads Brown’s Initiative for Sustainable Energy and other researchers from Brown University’s School of Engineering have discovered new details about how destructive cracks form in flexible electronic devices — and how to prevent them.

Lucas Caretta, assistant professor of engineering at Brown University, received the School of Engineering’s 2025 Hazeltine Innovation Awards. The award grants to underwrite early-stage faculty research projects with the potential to attract external funding and create a lasting broadbased impact.

The Aspen Daily News published Brad Marston’s article, “On Physics: Removing atmospheric CO2 to stop climate change: Can it be done?” on Jul 3, 2025.

Brad Marston is a climate and quantum physicist at Brown University and president-elect of the American Physical Society. He is the core faculty member of Initiative for Sustainable Energy since 2023.

Feng Lin has joined the Brown University School of Engineering as Associate Professor, with an appointment beginning July 1. He was also jointly appointed in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and affiliated with the Macromolecules Innovation Institute.

Lucas Caretta, the Howard M. Reisman ’76 P’09 assistant professor of engineering at Brown University, has been awarded a Faculty Early Career Development grant from the National Science Foundation.

NCSE announced the winners of the Friend of the Planet award for 2025: The CLEO Institute, a non-profit organization seeking to build climate literacy and mobilize climate action, directed by Yoca Arditi-Rocha; Kim Cobb, a climate scientist and gifted climate communicator at Brown University (formerly at Georgia Institute of Technology); and John Toohey-Morales, a Florida-based atmospheric and environmental scientist who was among the first broadcast meteorologists to emphasize climate change on the air.

A new APS report, co-written by ISE Core Faculty Member and APS President-elect Brad Marston, outlines the challenges of scrubbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Applications to the one-year, on-campus program will close on May 1. Nitin Padture, a professor of engineering and the director of the ISE said “We really need an educated workforce who can understand what’s going on (and) how to transform from a historically carbon-based economy to a decarbonized economy."

Francis J. Doyle III, Provost of Brown University, announced the appointment of Prof. Greg Hirth, a professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences, as Brown’s next Vice President for Research. He is also a core faculty member of the Initiative for Sustainable Energy (ISE).

This article includes commentary from Professor of Engineering Nitin Padture, Director of Initiative for Sustainable Energy (ISE), on the life expectancies of different types of solar cells.

Twenty-five faculty members and three emeriti faculty of Brown Engineering have been recognized among the world’s top two percent of scientists in 2024, according to Stanford/Elsevier’s Top 2% Scientist Rankings. Among them, eight are core faculty members of the Initiative for Sustainable Energy. They are Andrew Peterson, Angus Kingon, Brian Sheldon, Daniel Mittleman, Franklin Goldsmith, Pradeep Guduru, Nitin Padture, Yue Qi,