2026
June 2026: Mauricio successfully defends his Ph.D. Thesis. Congratulations!
March 2026: University of Minnesota wins the grand prize at the TMS Bladesmithing Competition. Congratulations to our team members Courtney and Eli!
2025
December 2025: Minh-Tam's work on developing a framework to predict creep rupture in engineering alloys was published in Materials & Design.
October 2025: The Mara group welcomes a new graduate student Jiahua Lu and new undergraduate students Eli Peterson and Najma Jamac.
September 2025: The Mara group welcomes a new staff member Shristy Sahu.
June 2025: Sushmita Majumder successfully defends her Ph.D. Thesis. Congratulations!
May 2025: Mauricio's work on Ti/Nb nanolaminates is published in Nano Letters
April 2025: Soumyadeep successfully passes his Preliminary Oral Exam and becomes a PhD candidate. Congratulations!
2024
September 2024: Congratulations to Sushmita Majumder for publishing her research work in the International Journal of Pharmaceutics.
April 2024: Minh-Tam Hoang successfully passes her Preliminary Oral Exam and becomes a PhD candidate. Congratulations!
April 2024: Sushmita Majumder has been awarded with the Prestigious "Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship" for the academic year 2024-25. Congratulations!!
March 2024: UMN won 2nd place in Bladesmithing competition at TMS 2024. Congratulations to the team members Ashlie Hamilton & Cuong Ho!
January 2024: Cheng can’t get enough! Publishes another first author article in Acta Materialia: “Cheng, Justin Y., et al. "3D Interfaces Enhance Nanolaminate Strength and Deformability in Multiple Loading Orientations." Acta Materialia (2024): 119697.”
January 2024: Justin Cheng successfully defends his Ph.D. Thesis. Congratulations!
2023
November 2023: Soumyadeep Sen joins the Mara group as a new graduate student. Welcome!
October 2023: Cheng is on fire! Publishes another first author paper in Materials Science and Engineering: A, “Cheng, Justin Y., et al. "The influence of thermomechanical treatment pathways on tex
May 2023: Mauricio De Leo successfully completes his Preliminary Oral Exam, advancing to Ph.D. candidacy. Arriba arriba!
March 2023: CEMS UMN won the Materials Bowl competition for the second year in a row at TMS 2023. Congratulations to the participating Mara group members - Moujhuri Sau & Ashlie Hamilton!
February 2023: Prof. Mara has been awarded TMS 2023 Brimacombe Medalist as a recognition of his sustained achievement in education, technology, and business related to materials science and engineering.
January 2023: Mauricio De Leo and his teammate Zach McAllister from Zazadzinski’s group get first place in the Crucible Prize competition for their pitch for “Greener Forward: A sustainable energy storage solution”!
2022
November 2022: Minh-Tam joins the Mara group as a new graduate student. Welcome!
May 2022: Sushmita Majumder successfully passes her preliminary oral exams, advancing to Ph.D. candidacy. Congratulations!
May 2022: Kevin Schmalbach bursts out of his grad student cocoon and successfully defends his Ph.D. Thesis. Now starting a post-doc at Bruker in Eden Praire. Congratulations!
2018
January 2018: The Mara Group at University of Minnesota is born. An unprecedented focus in research development and group culture collides with news and record keeping progress for the next 4 years. Justin Cheng and Kevin Schmalbach start the group!