News - Faber Research Group

May 2026: Sara Gorske successfully defended her thesis "In-Situ Synchrotron X-Ray Studies of Microstructural Effects on Brittle Fracture." Congratulations, Dr. Gorske!

April 2026: Sara Gorske along with Jun-Sang Park, Peter Kenesei, Hemant Sharma, Jonathan Almer, Peter Voorhees, and Katherine T. Faber published "In-situ visualization of a growing brittle crack in aluminum oxynitride using synchrotron X-rays and the double-cleavage drilled compression geometry" in Acta Materialia.

October 2025: Professor Faber delivered the 2025 PPG Foundation Lecture at UC Berkeley's Department of Materials Science and Engineering. The PPG Foundation Lectureship for Materials Innovation and Service Excellence recognizes distinguished professors for their commitment to mentorship, service, diversity, and contributions to society.

July 2025: Zac Chase along with Professor Faber and co-authors, Tomas Seager, Dean Cheikh, Billy Chun-Yip Li, Bryan McEnerney, Jonathan Guerra, John Borgonia, and Samad Firdosy, published "Integrating Laser-Powder Bed Fusions and Reaction Bonding: A Hybrid Approach to High-Temperature Ceramic Fabrication" in Scripta Materialia.

June 2025: Welcome to Fernando Milach Teixeira, a WAVE student who is working with Zac Chase this summer. Fernando joins us from Iowa State University where he is a senior in Mechanical Engineering. Audrey Chyung has rejoined us as a SURF student, this year working with Wes Patel. Audrey is a rising Junior in Materials Science here at Caltech. Glad to have you both with us!

December 2024: Zac Chase was a co-author in a recent publication, "Fast and Facile Synthesis of Cobalt-Doped ZIF-8 and Fe3O4/MCC/Cobalt-Doped ZIF-8 for the Photodegradation of Organic Dyes under Visible Light" in ACS Omega. The work was conducted at the University of Southern Mississippi, where Zac was an undergraduate.

October 2024: Professor Faber was awarded the 2024 W. David Kingery Award by the American Ceramic Society. The award is presented to one recipient in recognition of "distinguished lifelong achievements involving multidisciplinary and global contributions to ceramic technology, science, education and art."

October 2024: Kevin Yu was named ACerS Journals Rising Star for his paper in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society,"Thermochemical interactions between yttria-stabilized zirconia and molten lunar regolith simulants", co-authored with Jamesa Stokes, Bryan Harder, Lorlyn Reidy, Katherine T. Faber. Kevin is pictured here with Prof. John C. Mauro, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society.

September 2024: Dr. Laura Quinn and Professors Faber and George Rossman along with co-authors from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and the University of Central Florida published "Shape memory and superelasticity in polycrystalline ceria-stabilized zirconia honeycombs" in Acta Materialia.

August 2024: Sara Gorske presented a talk on "The Influence of Microstructure on Brittle Ceramic Fracture as Investigated by In-Situ Synchrotron Techniques" at the 2024 Gordon Research Seminar on Solid-State Studies in Ceramics: Bridging the Nanoscale and the Macroscale: Microstructural Origins of Engineered Properties in Ceramics. She presented her poster of the same title at the Gordon Research Conference on Solid-State Studies in Ceramics: Merging Atomistic and Continuum Analysis of Defects and Interfaces Across Varying Length Scales.

July 2024: Zac Chase presented a talk entitled "The Influence of Zirconia Additives on Processing and Properties in Coupled Laser Powder Bed Fusion and Reaction Bonding Methods" at the Tenth International Conference on Ceramics in Montreal, Canada. Professor Faber presented two invited talks at the sample conference: "Extending the Reach of Porous Ceramics: Tuning Pores for Functionality" and "Ceramic Protective Surfaces and Coatings: Studies Under Operational Conditions."