Laboratory for Advanced Materials
Welcome to the Laboratory for Advanced Materials!
Our lab focuses on understanding the physical properties of materials with complex structures at multiple scales (from nano- to macro- scales) via a combination of theoretical analysis, numerical simulations, and experimental characterizations. We are interested in a variety of materials and properties. The goal is to uncover or enhance material performance characteristics for industrial, medical, and aerospace applications.
Want to join our group? Qualified candidates must send a CV with a list of publications, a research statement, and BS & MS transcripts to PI Ma at Jihong.Ma@uvm.edu. Only selected candidates will receive a reply.
Recent News
11/2023 Dr. Ma was invited to present her work at the Department of Mechanical Engineering Seminar at the University of South Carolina. Thank you, Dr. Downey, for the invitation!
10/2023 Our paper, entitled Breakdown of Conventional Winding Number Calculation in One-Dimensional Lattices with Interactions Beyond Nearest Neighbors, has been accepted by Communications Physics. Congratulations to all the authors! For the first time, our work theoretically and experimentally demonstrated the breakdown of the bulk-edge correspondence in a 1D chain, which has been conventionally characterized using winding numbers. We mathematically proved that the topological edge states are de facto the phonon realization of Jackiw-Rebbi zero modes, which can be accurately characterized using Berry connections.
10/2023 Dr. Ma was invited to present her work at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Seminar at Syracuse University, New York. Thank you, Dr. Shan, for the invitation!
09/2023 Dr. Ma was invited to present her work at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Seminar at the University at Buffalo, New York. Thank you, Dr. Nouh, for the invitation!
07/2023 Dr. Ma was invited to present her work for the Complex Mechanical Metamaterials workshop held at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
03/2023 Dr. Ma has been selected as a Summer Faculty Fellow by the Air Force Reserach Laboratory.
03/2023 Our team, led by Drs. Ma and Huston, has received funding from the NASA EPSCoR to work on metamaterials. Congratulations!
01/11/2023 Dr. Ma was invited to give a seminar talk at the Air Force Research Laboratory. Thank you, Dr. Kavir Dass, for your invitation!
01/2023 Our CNMS user facility proposal has been approved.
01/01/2023 Our team, led by Drs. Ma and Huston, has received funding from the U.S. Semiconductor Research Corporation to conduct research on electron migration in collaboration with Marvell Semiconductor Inc. Congratulations!
11/03/2022 Dr. Ma presented Dynamics of meta-sandwich beams at IMECE in Columbus, OH.
10/06/2022 Dr. Ma was invited to give a technical presentation at 3M. Thank you, Dr. Jiadi Fan, for your invitation!
09/29/2022 Our team, led by Dr. Jihong Ma, has received a US-DOE grant titled Multi‐scale Study of Self‐Healing Polymers to Enhance Carbon Dioxide Removal. Congrats to everyone on this team! This project will be conducted via a collaboration between the UVM (led by Dr. Ma) and the University of Alabama (led by Prof. Jason Bara, Professor of Chemical Engineering) together in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, One of our advertised PhD positions is for this awarded project. Thank you everyone for contributing to our project! News for both PI Ma and PI Cotts can be found here. Dr. Ma's interview can be found here.
09/29/2022 Our team, led by Prof. Benjamin Cotts, Assistant Professor of Chemistry/Biochemistry at Middlebury Colledge, has received a US-DOE grant titled Elucidating transient localized disorder of semiconductor nanocrystals. Congrats, Dr. Cotts! Dr. Cotts and Dr. Ma will be working on this project together in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory, One of our advertised PhD positions is for this awarded project. Dr. Cotts' interview can be found here.
09/19/2022 Dr. Ma's review article, entitled Phonon Engineering of Micro- and Nanophononic Crystals and Acoustic Metamaterials: A Review has been accepted by Small Science. Thank you, Editor-in-Chief Dr. Ulf Scheffler and former editor Dr. Debora Walker, for your kind invitation. Also appreciated are reviewers' constructive suggestions. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the fundamentals and identifies gaps in the development of phononic crystals and acoustic metamaterials at small scales.
08/30/2022 Our team, led by Prof. Matthew White in the Department of Physics at UVM, has received the prestigious NSF PIRE award entitled PIRE: US-Japan Partnership in Excitonic Soft Materials for Clean Energy. Congrats to everyone on the team! This project will be a collaboration between UVM and the University of Oklahoma in the U.S., and Yamagata University and Osaka University in Japan. Dr. Ma is a co-investigator on this project leading the computational effort. One of our advertised PhD positions is for this awarded project. Restrictions apply to citizenship and permanent residency. Please consult with Dr. Ma for more details.
08/16/2022 Dr. Ma was invited to give a technical presentation at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Thank you, Dr. Stephan Irle, for your invitation!
03/07/2022 Dr. Ma presented Wave propagation in meta-sandwich beams at SPIE in Long Beam, CA.
02/21/2022 Our paper titled Symmetry Effect on the Dynamic Behaviors of Sandwich Beams with Periodic Face Sheets has been accepted by Composite Structures. Congratulations!
01/27/2022 Dr. Ma was selected to present her work at the NASA EPSCoR Research Virtual Meeting with NASA Langley Research Center.
01/2022 Dr. Ma has received the NSF EPSCoR Fellowship and will conduct her proposed research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Past News:
News in 2021
09/2021 Mr. Amir Rajabpoor Alisepahi is joining our group as a PhD student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering starting in the Spring. Welcome!
08/2021 Our paper titled Spatial correlations of entangled polymer dynamics has been accepted by Physical Review E. Congratulations!
04/2021 Mr. Logan Larose has won the prestigious UVM ME Undergraduate Research Award. Congratulations, Logan!
01/2021 Our paper titled Spatiotemporal mapping of mesoscopic liquid dynamics has been accepted by Physical Review E. Congratulations!
News in 2020
11/2020 PI Jihong Ma has won the Early EXtra Promotion of REsearch and Scholarly Success grant award at UVM.
10/2020 Dr. Eshagh Farzaneh Joubaneh joined our group as a postdoctoral associate. Welcome to our lab, Eshagh!
10/2020 Our group has been granted computational allocations at OLCF.
09/2020 Mr. Logan Larose joined our group as an undergraduate research assistant. Welcome to our lab, Logan!
06/2020 Our CNMS user facility proposal has been approved.
04/2020 PI Jihong Ma is the organizer of the mini-symposium Advances In Polymer Modeling And Simulations under Track 7 - Soft, Active Materials and Applications in Soft Robotics at the 2020 Society of Engineering Science (SES) Annual Technical Meeting in Minneapolis, MN. Please submit your abstract here before the deadline (4/15/2020). (Postponed to Oct 2021 due to COVID-19).
03/27/2020 Our paper titled Switchable phonon diodes using nonlinear topological Maxwell lattices is published in Physical Review B. Congratulations!
03/05/2020 Jihong Ma will chair the session Electric Polarization and Polymer Physics at the 2020 March American Physical Society (APS) Meeting in Denver, CO.
03/03/2020 Jihong Ma received the APS Division of Materials Physics (DMP) Post-doctoral Travel Award for the 2020 March APS Meeting in Denver, CO. Thanks again for the support from ORNL!
03/02/2020 Jihong Ma received the APS Division of Computational Physics (DCOMP) Travel Award for the 2020 March APS Meeting in Denver, CO. Thanks for the support from ORNL!
03/02/2020 Jihong Ma will present her work entitled Spatiotemporal Mapping of Polymer Dynamics conducted at ORNL at the 2020 March APS Meeting in Denver, CO.
News in 2019
10/08/2019 Our paper titled Valley Hall In-Plane Edge States as Building Blocks for Elastodynamic Logic Circuits is published in Physical Review Applied. Congratulations!
05/13/2019 Jihong Ma joined the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) as a postdoctoral associate.
08/2022 Mr. Temitope Boriwaye is joining our group as a PhD student in the Materials Science Program starting in the Fall. Welcome!