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Materials PhD Student Advances to UCSB Grad Slam Final

Five graduate researchers from The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering at UC Santa Barbara competed in the preliminary round of the 2026 Grad Slam, the university’s annual competition focused on research communication. Blending storytelling with scientific insight, participants distilled years of work into concise and engaging presentations, covering topics ranging from artificial intelligence and advanced materials to computing and robotics.

After deliberation, judges awarded first place to Jordan Bream, a first-year materials PhD student, whose research addresses a largely overlooked but critical issue: the aging infrastructure behind the U.S. energy grid. The runner-up spot went to Parker Carlson, a third-year computer science PhD candidate, who presented on accelerating search in the AI era, describing his work as “developing a search engine that’s built like a bus but drives like a Ferrari."

Bream, who admitted that she entered the competition primarily for the experience, said one of the biggest challenges was making complex research accessible and engaging. “When I started writing about my research, I was struggling,” Bream said. “How do you make energy grid systems fun and exciting?”

Her breakthrough came from a striking realization: much of the U.S. energy grid still relies on technology from the 1960s.

“If eleven states somehow lost power, our entire system could shut down because of this technology,” Bream explained. That insight became the foundation of her talk, linking everyday electricity use to the urgent need for improved energy storage solutions.

Condensing her research into just three minutes required significant revision. Her initial draft exceeded ten minutes, forcing her to refine her message into a more clear and compelling narrative.

Advised by Jeff Sakamoto, a mechanical engineering and materials professor, Bream studies NASICON (Sodium Super Ionic Conductor), a solid-state electrolyte used in batteries. Unlike the flammable liquid electrolytes common in lithium-ion batteries, NASICON offers a safer and more sustainable alternative. Her research explores replacing liquid components with solid materials better suited for large-scale energy storage.

The sustainability implications of her work are significant. Current battery technologies rely heavily on lithium, which is costly and resource-intensive to extract. “Mining lithium is unsustainable,” Bream said. “We use fracking and evaporation methods that take a huge amount of water and electricity.”

Sodium, by contrast, is inexpensive and abundantly available — including in North America. “It has similar — if not sometimes better properties than lithium-ion batteries,” Bream said. “It’s a no-brainer that we should invest in this promising alternative.”

Bream’s long-term goal is to optimize and scale the material for real-world applications. “Right now, we make pellets in the lab that are no more than about 10 millimeters. Eventually, we want to be able to build systems that could be 10 feet or even 10 meters wide for grid-scale storage,” she said.

With her talk revised following feedback from the judges, Bream will compete in the UCSB Grad Slam Finals on April 9. The winner will advance to the UC systemwide Grad Slam Finals on April 22 in Sacramento.

New AI Speaker Series Features Engineering Faculty Members

A new UC Santa Barbara Library speaker series, titled AI in Action: Conversations with UCSB Researchers, will feature several speakers from The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering The first of those COE faculty will be assistant professor of computer science Xin (Eric) Wang, director of the Center for Responsible Machine Learning. He will join Fabian Offert, assistant professor in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies and director of the Center for Humanities and Machine Learning, as featured speakers at the second in the ongoing series of hour-long seminars, to be held at 4 p.m. on April 9 in the library’s first-floor Instruction & Training Room 1312.

The April 9 event is the second installment of the series, which is planned to be held monthly during the academic year. The subsequent session, on May 18, will feature COE distinguished professor Simon Billinge, director of the California NanoSystems Institute, and Nina Miolane, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and co-director of REAL AI (Reliable, Efficient, and ALigned AI) for Science.

At the inaugural event, on February 9, two researchers — Tobias Fischer, director of the Earth Research Institute; and Ben Halpern, executive director of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) — presented on how they use AI in their research. Fischer spoke about using AI to more accurately forecast wildland fires, while Halpern discussed how his team has been able to track invasive succulents more efficiently in hard-to-access coastal areas with AI-powered image recognition.

That first event, which drew more attendees than any previous library event, was inspired by the growing interest in how AI is affecting research, said university librarian, Todd Grappone. AI helps researchers compile and analyze data more quickly, which is driving an increase in the amount of scholarly work emerging from UCSB. But, Grappone wondered, how might that increased productivity shape the university itself, both today and in the future.

The library plays an important role in exploring this question, as it can assist and mediate how researchers can use journal articles and academic archives, Grappone said. “Scholars are increasingly using AI-powered tools to query and analyze large-scale digitized archives,” he noted, “uncovering prior research, surfacing hidden datasets, and generating new lines of inquiry that were previously difficult or impossible to detect.” He noted that libraries work to protect and defend researchers’ rights to access and use this material.

The AI in Action series is co-sponsored by the UCSB AI Community of Practice AI for Research Special Interest Group, which brings together researchers to explore and advance AI in ways that are ethical, equitable, and aligned with the campus mission and value. “Our goal is to create a collaborative space where researchers can engage with AI thoughtfully and responsibly,” said Li Kui, a project scientist at the Marine Science Institute and NCEAS, and is involved in organizing the AI for Research group. In addition to the in-person AI in Action events on campus, AI for Research hosts Zoom-based sessions that connect researchers across disciplines and cover topics such as using generative AI for programming assistance, literature reviews, introductory courses, and website development. Kui noted that the group plans to continue expanding these offerings to support the broader UCSB research community.

Kui and Grappone encourage researchers who are interested in learning more about how their colleagues are using AI in their research, or who would like to propose a topic for future seminars, to join the AI for Research group, as well as registering to attend the upcoming seminars.

“Engineers who come to the seminar series,” Grappone said, “will be inspired to see how their peers from their own disciplines, and others, are using the library’s archives to dig into research they want to do.”

Pacific Coast Business Times Recognizes Professor Michelle O'Malley

When Michelle O’Malley’s older brother went off to college to study chemical engineering, she was at a loss. She wasn’t quite certain what that was, but she became a quick study. Her initial understanding was that it involved “making oil and chemicals and things. But it’s actually much more than that.”

O’Malley can speak about the topic with a high level of expertise. The Cleveland native earned degrees in chemical engineering and biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and followed that with a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware. Postdoctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology came next. She joined UC Santa Barbara in 2012 as an assistant professor.

Now, just as she followed an initial curiosity about chemical engineering down a career path, O’Malley has collected more titles than she has degrees.

She serves as interim chair of UCSB’s Department of Bioengineering, the Cliff R. Scholle Endowed Chair in Chemical Engineering, a professor in the Department of Bioengineering and director of the NSF BioFoundry for Extreme and Exceptional Fungi, Archaea and Bacteria (ExFAB).

O’Malley is the first woman in campus history to lead a major STEM research center.

“I’m just a type-A person,” O’Malley said. “I see a vision; I really want to execute it. I think I’m good at putting people and ideas together and when I can do that, I think that’s the driving force. I get really excited about, ‘Oh, my gosh. We can do something nobody’s ever done before.’”

From her initial uncertainty about the subject, O’Malley came to realize the breadth of chemical engineering.

“It’s making all kinds of useful products for humanity. And it’s not limited to chemistry. It’s also biology. It’s also environmental engineering. It’s really kind of using nature’s building blocks, at least for me, to do new and different things than what nature does,” she said.

Part of her research involves trying to make value-added chemicals from waste. Agricultural waste, such as what’s left behind after a harvest, can be converted into something of worth, such as flavorings, coatings or fuel.

The work at ExFAB, which began earlier this year, is to determine whether changes to the gut microbiome in babies play a role in the development of a child’s cognition, specifically autism spectrum disorder.

The gut microbiome is cultured and exposed to various factors, such as different foods or antibiotics and then tested for changes in its chemistry. The research could potentially lead to an intervention.

University professors don’t receive stable research funding, but O’Malley has made it work, securing over $46 million in research grants and contracts under her direct management, including ExFAB, and including the $6 million grant from the Wellcome Foundation to study the connection between the gut microbiome and autism.

“It’s the most unique aspect of research I’ve ever been part of, but it’s an opportunity to really make a translational impact,” O’Malley said. “This touches me quite a bit because my youngest son is actually on the spectrum, so I think about this all the time.”

O’Malley, who has an 8-year-old son and 5-year-old twins, said she measures success by the impact she has had.

“You can look at the number of papers published and all that, and that’s all fine, but think the number of PhD students and postdocs that I’ve trained that then go out and use that knowledge to advance science and engineering, that’s really what measures my impact,” she said.

“Michelle is a true superwoman,” said Sherylle Mills Englander, managing director of ExFAB. “She is a highly engaged mother of three in addition to managing one of the largest research groups at UCSB, building a first-of-its-kind anaerobic chamber and managing millions of research dollars.

She is also a master at team building — finding the right people, with the right skills, who have the chemistry to work seamlessly with each other, while enjoying each other’s company.

‘Her team-building skills ensure that any project under her directorship becomes a sum greater than its parts, outperforming expectations. It is an inspiration watching her work.”

In addition to her many degrees and titles, O’Malley has collected an impressive list of awards. For instance, she received an Early Career Award from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2013, which led to her receiving the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers three years later. That particular honor brought her to the White House and the presence of President Barack Obama.

“He was just very attentive to us, and he took a lot of time,” she said. “It was a room of 90 or so people that were all just sort of very starstruck. He spent about an hour with us, talking and telling us about how he really was a champion for what we were all doing and supported us and how he was going to try and make sure that American innovation and science stayed at the forefront.”

O’Malley said she tells her students one piece of advice, which is appropriate beyond the classroom as well.

That is to develop grit, meaning the ability to overcome obstacles, which is a trait that comes in handy when experiments fail. She suggests talking to people about how to approach a problem from a different angle.

“I find that the students who really rise to that occasion end up having a great experience,” she said.

Beacon Photonics Becomes First Industry Member of OASIS Facility

Beacon Photonics has become the first industry member of OASIS, UC Santa Barbara’s new innovation and translational research hub, marking an early milestone for the 105,000-square-foot facility designed to bring together established companies, startups, and academic researchers. Managed by The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering at UCSB, OASIS is built to accelerate discovery and move ideas from lab to application, connecting companies directly with UCSB’s research expertise and shared-use facilities.

“Beacon Photonics exemplifies what OASIS is designed to enable, taking breakthrough ideas in areas like integrated photonics and rapidly translating them into technologies with real-world impact,” said Umesh Mishra, dean of The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering. “Their presence sets a powerful tone for the kind of innovation ecosystem we are building here.”

“While we continue to build out the facility’s capabilities and offerings, Beacon’s membership signals that OASIS is no longer just an idea, but a reality,” said Tal Margalith, the college’s executive director of strategic initiatives and innovation.

Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, Beacon Photonics develops advanced integrated photonic technologies for applications ranging from communications and sensing to quantum systems and national security. By establishing “Beacon West” at OASIS, the company is expanding its footprint while embedding itself within one of the world’s leading photonics research communities.

“OASIS offers a collaborative environment and shared-use capabilities that are essential for rapid innovation,” said Gordon Keeler, co-founder and CEO of Beacon Photonics. “Santa Barbara has an exceptional photonics ecosystem, and OASIS gives us a natural place to connect with that community.”

For Beacon Photonics, proximity was a deciding factor. Located just minutes from UCSB’s state-of-the-art Nanofabrication Facility (Nanofab), OASIS enables a tight feedback loop between design, fabrication, and testing, each of which is critical for advancing next-generation technologies.

“Santa Barbara has cultivated one of the world’s preeminent photonics research communities,” said Keeler, a former program manager with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) with longstanding ties to UCSB. “Being just minutes away improves our productivity, strengthens our connections, and accelerates collaboration with faculty.”

More broadly, the move reflects a need for speed.

“Advancing photonics technology successfully requires a rapid cycle of design, fabrication, and system integration,” Keeler explained. “OASIS gives us direct access to world-class fabrication capabilities and prototyping infrastructure, shortening the path from concept to deployment

OASIS provides not only a technical advantage, but a human one. The company is bringing in engineers with deep UCSB roots and extensive experience in the Nanofab, further strengthening the connection between campus research and industry application.

“I’ve been able to immediately apply my familiarity with the tools and processes to Beacon Photonics,” said senior staff engineer Alexander Spott, who earned his PhD at UCSB in the lab of photonics pioneer and Beacon Photonics board member John Bowers. “OASIS positions us to grow and operate independently while remaining closely connected to the UCSB ecosystem.”

For others, the value lies in everyday connectivity.

“The two locations being a few minutes apart creates a real sense of proximity,” said John Carter, a staff process engineer and a longtime Nanofab user and UCSB alumnus. “It makes it very easy to stay connected to the photonics community, whether through technical collaboration or informal exchanges, and to engage other groups and companies for shared gain.”

Charlotte Flatebo, a senior test engineer at Beacon Photonics, pointed to both the environment and the impact of the work itself.

“Contributing to technology with the potential to benefit society is a strong motivator,” said Flatebo, a former Otis Williams Postdoctoral Fellow at UCSB. “And being in such a beautiful and collaborative incubation space with expanded capabilities for transformational R&D is a massive plus.”

Flatebo added that the partnership creates new opportunities to mentor and train emerging engineers through outreach programs run by the university, further strengthening the regional talent pipeline.

As the first company to establish a presence at OASIS, Keeler sees an opportunity not only to benefit from the ecosystem, but to help shape it.

“It’s exciting to be part of building something from the ground up,” he said. “OASIS will be a focal point for translating photonics innovations to commercial reality, and we’re looking forward to working with other companies, startups, and collaborators as they join us.”

Looking ahead, Keeler envisions OASIS as a central hub for the company’s West Coast operations and a catalyst for new partnerships.

By welcoming Beacon Photonics as its first member, OASIS is beginning to take shape as a community designed to shorten the path from discovery to impact.

“Beacon Photonics chose UCSB as the place to advance its research and development,” said Margalith. “We hope this signals to companies that UCSB, with its research excellence, world-class shared facilities, and strong startup support infrastructure, is the right place for deep-technology, materials-driven innovation.”

Nobel laureate Shuji Nakamura to receive honorary doctorate from University of Oxford

UC Santa Barbara engineering professor Shuji Nakamura has been selected as one of this year’s recipients for a prestigious honorary degree from the University of Oxford. The inventor of the blue LED, which ushered in a revolution in energy efficient lighting all over the world, Nakamura was a co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics.

“I am deeply honored to receive this recognition from the University of Oxford,” said Nakamura, who will receive the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa. “The development of the blue LED was the result of many years of persistence and collaboration, and I am grateful to the colleagues and students who have contributed to advancing this technology and its impact on society."

A professor of both electrical and computer engineering and of materials at UCSB, Nakamura hails from Japan, where he spent the first part of his research career. His work involved the development of two-flow metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, a technology that enabled the growth of the highest quality gallium nitride crystals — the foundational material for the blue LED — and subsequently, the invention of the first high-brightness blue LED.

In 2000, Nakamura joined the faculty of UCSB, later also becoming a co-director of the campus’s Solid State Lighting & Energy Electronics Center, which was formed to advance highly efficient solid-state lighting and energy-efficient power switching using wide-bandgap semiconductors. In addition, he is the CEO of Blue Laser Fusion, Inc., and is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering as well as a recipient of numerous awards and honors for his work.

The presentation of an honorary degree is a time-honored tradition at the University of Oxford, which bestowed the first recorded honorary degree in 1478 or 1479. Since then, the university has recognized individuals “of conspicuous distinction” in academia, business, the arts and in public life with this honor. This year, Nakamura joins economist Daron Acemoğlu, professor of neurosurgery Katalin Karikó, literary critic and historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Birmingham Royal Ballet director Carlos Acosta, actress Adjoa Andoh, tennis champion Billie Jean King and business executive Dame Emma Walmsley as a recipient of the University of Oxford’s most prestigious award.

Nakamura will receive his honorary doctorate at a special ceremony, the Encaenia, at the University of Oxford on Wednesday, June 24, 2026.

Using Mechanical Inputs to Enhance Quantum States in Sensors

Most people might tend to think of diamonds as high-end adornments. UC Santa Barbara physicist Ania Bleszynski Jayich thinks of the diamonds she grows in the UC Quantum Foundry, which she co-directs, as the potentially powerful source driving quantum sensors. Sensors are currently much farther along in their development than other potential quantum applications. Diamond sensors are particularly promising as a quantum application, because they require relatively few quantum bits (qubits) to operate, whereas a quantum computer, for instance, requires more than one hundred thousand, and perhaps as many as a million, qubits to handle error correction, one of the main hurdles for quantum computing.

Now, another advance has developed in the Bleszynski Jayich lab. An article about it, titled “Spin-embedded diamond optomechanical resonator with a mechanical quality factor exceeding one million,” appears in the March 20 issue of the journal Optica.

Resolved to Resonate

“Mechanical resonators are among the simplest technologies. “You tap a tuning fork, and it rings,” says Bleszynski Jayich. “That’s mechanical resonance. Resonance in the quantum realm is created by phonons, which refer to a coordinated mechanical excitation of many atoms, such as those vibrating in the tuning fork. A mechanical resonator is, therefore, just some element that resonates at a specific frequency. The basic requirement of a high-performing oscillator is that it oscillates for a long time before the energy — and the oscillation amplitude — decays. In the photonic regime, the simplest optical resonator involves two mirrors that face each other, such that light can bounce back and forth between them many times. Researchers In the Bleszynski Jayich lab use a mechanically oscillating beam, called a diamond optomechanical crystal, which is a very thin beam approximately one micrometer wide, or one-hundredth the diameter of a human hair. A telecom frequency optical resonator is co-located with the mechanical resonator to aid in driving and reading out the mechanical degree of freedom.

The quality of any mechanical oscillator is quantified largely by its quality (Q) factor, which refers to how many times it oscillates before the energy dissipates away. A Q factor of a million is very high, but by using ten-gigahertz-scale frequencies, researchers in Blesyinski Jayich’s lab made an oscillator that cycles its signal ten billion times per second. “We're focused on implementing mechanical resonators into quantum technologies, and for that, we need a high frequency,” she says.

The Diamond Deal: Tuning the Sensor

“If you could see the tines of a vibrating tuning fork, you’d see them moving back and forth at some amplitude before the energy left the tuning fork and the sound died down. Our diamond resonator oscillates about a million times before the energy leaks out into the environment,” Bleszynski Jayich says. “That’s why it's important to have very-high-Q mechanical resonators, because they can store quantum information for a relatively long time. To do quantum computing or quantum sensing or quantum anything with mechanics requires that information can be stored in this mechanical degree of freedom for as long as possible, for use as a memory or as a transducer for instance.
Bleszynski Jayich explains that an important feature of her long-lived diamond resonators is the fact that they host engineered defects that make excellent quantum sensors.”

“Suppose you have a piece of diamond with billions of carbon atoms in it,” Bleszynski Jayich posits. “Every once in a while, there's a nitrogen atom — found often in diamond — that has a vacancy next to it, called an NV (nitrogen vacancy) center. These NV centers, which are physically housed inside the diamond and fluoresce when excited by light, constitute long-lived quantum bits that can sense tiny magnetic, electric, strain, or thermal fields.

“Advanced quantum sensors and other eventual applications require those bits not only to exist, but also to interact,” says Bleszynski Jayich. “Our lab can easily make hundreds of such qubits at a time, but one of our long-term goals is to get them to ‘talk’ to each other and work together to solve some computation, or to sense with sensitivity beyond what is classically possible.”

“The coordinated motion of atoms in the lattice provides one interesting pathway by which the embedded defects can talk to each other. And the high Q factor allows for stronger mediation and, as a result, more control over that interaction. Eventually, if I can put N sensors together and engineer the right type of interactions, mediated by mechanical motion of the lattice in which they are embedded, I can build a better sensor than I can with N classically interacting sensors. The quantum advantage can lead to improved precision.”

Diamond Vs. Silicon

“Nearly everyone who explores mechanical systems for quantum technologies starts with a substrate of silicon or a silicon-nitride, because they are well-established materials,” Bleszynski Jayich points out. “Diamond has exciting prospects, as it not only hosts highly coherent qubits, but also has the highest thermal conductivity of any material, a wide band gap, and phenomenal optical and mechanical properties. But it does have the drawback of being difficult to fabricate. However, in our lab, during roughly the past fifteen years, we have overcome many of the fabrication hurdles.”

To date, silicon has been shown to have a higher mechanical Q than diamond, but, says Bleszynski Jayich, the differences in Q have a lot to do with how it is measured, since the Q of any material is highly sensitive to the measuring technique. Researchers in the Bleszynski Jayich lab did their measurements by constantly shining light on the system, a technique called continuous optical probing. That, however, causes significant, problematic heating due to absorption of the light “So, if you're out to prove you have the highest Q, you would not measure under continuous optical illumination,” she says.

“A better method is pulsed optical probing, in which light is turned on and off, and the measurement is made when it’s off,” explains Bleszynski Jayich. “Looking forward, we aim to use a pulsed technique to see how good our resonators are when we're not shining light on them. We expect to see significantly improved Q, comparable to or even better than silicon.

Ultimately, we hope to leverage even higher mechanical Q’s to realize mechanically mediated NV-NV qubit interactions to realize a many-body, metrologically useful entangled state “That work is still ahead,” Bleszynski Jayich says, adding that, as is the case for nearly all current quantum research, the actual applications will come later. “At the moment, we are motivated by theoretical proposals.”

New Model Explains How Single Electrons Cause Damage Inside Silicon Chips

Researchers in the UC Santa Barbara Materials Department have uncovered the elusive quantum mechanism by which energetic electrons break chemical bonds inside microelectronic devices — a detrimental process that slowly degrades performance over time. The discovery, published as an Editors’ Suggestion in Physical Review B, explains decades-old experimental puzzles and moves scientists closer to engineering more reliable devices.

Modern electronics — from smartphones and laptops to solar cells and medical implants — depend on semiconductor materials being stable and dependable for many years. Yet even the most advanced devices suffer gradual wear that eventually limits their performance. The leading culprit is “hot-carrier degradation,” a phenomenon that causes electrically energized electrons to trigger chemical changes deep inside the device. Until now, the precise physical mechanisms behind that process were unknown, limiting engineers’ ability to suppress the phenomenon.

Chris Van de Walle’s Computational Materials group has now uncovered the quantum mechanism that triggers bond breaking. The team focused on the silicon-hydrogen bonds that are present near the silicon-oxide interface at the heart of each transistor. Hydrogen is intentionally introduced during manufacturing to passivate any broken silicon bonds — that is, to prevent the broken bonds from acting as electrically active defects that degrade the performance. However, when constantly exposed to electrons flowing through the transistor, the hydrogen occasionally detaches, re-exposing the broken silicon bonds and degrading the device’s performance.

The accepted wisdom in the field was that this bond breaking was the cumulative result of many electrons hitting the bond. Van de Walle’s team used advanced quantum simulations to demonstrate that the process is actually triggered by a single electron. They identified a previously hidden electronic state that plays a key role in the mechanism: when a high-energy electron briefly occupies this state, it weakens the silicon–hydrogen bond and pushes the hydrogen atom out of position.

In a second breakthrough, the team revealed that hydrogen follows quantum-mechanical laws rather than classical ones as it detaches from the bond. If hydrogen were behaving as a classical particle, we could define a simple criterion for bond breaking, based on the distance between the silicon and hydrogen atoms. But hydrogen is not a classical particle; it behaves more like a cloud or a “wave packet”. Bond breaking is then defined by the probability that the hydrogen wave packet extends beyond a certain distance.

The newly discovered mechanism explains multiple experimental observations that have puzzled scientists for years. For instance, it was not understood why bond breaking is most detrimental when the electron energy is around seven electron-volts; the new results show that this value corresponds to the energy of the previously unidentified electronic state. Experimentalists had also observed that the process is temperature independent and is significantly slower (by a factor of one hundred) when using deuterium as a substitute for hydrogen — deuterium being an isotope that is electronically identical to hydrogen but twice as heavy. The new quantum model explains all of these effects, confirming that the underlying physics have finally been elucidated.

“Our results show that the interplay between electrons and nuclei in a highly non-classical regime is what drives bond breaking,” said Woncheol Lee, a postdoctoral researcher in the Van de Walle lab and the study’s first author. “This process doesn’t fit into the usual picture of heating-induced damage; it’s a short-lived quantum event that we can now model without needing to fit it to an experiment.”

The breakthrough has relevance beyond silicon technology. Electron-induced bond breaking occurs in many materials, including semiconductors used for light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and power electronics. Device degradation is currently a huge problem for ultraviolet LEDs, which engineers hope to commercialize for important applications such as disinfection and water purification. “The quantum framework we developed gives materials scientists a predictive tool to assess which chemical bonds are most likely to break in extreme conditions,” said Van de Walle, “thus opening the door to engineering more stable materials with longer lifespans.”

This work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and by a Global Research Outreach grant from Samsung Semiconductor, Inc. The computations were performed at the Texas Advanced Supercomputing Center through an allocation from the National Science Foundation Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) program.

Inside SB Hacks XII: 342 Hackers, One Transformational Weekend

SB Hacks XII, UC Santa Barbara’s annual hackathon, brought together 342 students from across the country for a weekend of creativity, coding, and collaboration. Hosted at Corwin Pavilion, participants ranging from first-time coders to experienced developers, worked individually and in teams to build applications with real-world impact.

The 24-hour competition featured tracks in entertainment, health and wellness, and education, alongside sponsor-specific challenges. The prompts encouraged students to tackle industry-relevant problems using advanced tools and emerging technologies.

For Timothy Sherwood, a distinguished professor of computer science and dean of the College of Creative Studies at UCSB, SB Hacks continues to exemplify UCSB’s collaborative spirit.

“It is far more than a competition — it really is a community experience where participants learn from one another and leave inspired to pursue bold new things,” said Sherwood, a long-time supporter of the event and one of this year’s judges.

Beyond technical ability, participants demonstrated creativity, teamwork, adaptability, and problem-solving, often working with unfamiliar application programming interfaces (APIs), tools that allow software systems to communicate and exchange data.

Joshua Lee, a computer science student at UCSB, explored how developers move from concept to execution. Using the Deepgram API, he built an AI-powered voice assistant that helps programmers plan projects conversationally, generating real-time diagrams and system architectures.

“The result is more than a chatbot—it’s an interactive planning partner that listens, advises, and visually maps out project architecture in real time, translating ideas into structured and actionable blueprints,” said Lee, who entered the competition as an individual and as part of a team.

Rahul Puritipati, a first-year computer science student at UCLA, developed a voice-controlled system that allows users to remotely access and operate a computer from their phone, an accessibility-focused enhancement of existing technology.

“The key is iteration,” he said. “Novel ideas are rare. The real opportunity is identifying the industry’s pain points and improving solutions that already exist but fall short. That takes real-world experience — understanding what people actually struggle with — and building from there.”

The event also marked the culmination of months of planning by a 35-member student leadership team, which coordinated logistics, sponsorships, and programming to ensure success. This year, organizers introduced a centralized digital system using QR codes on participant badges to streamline check-ins, meal coordination, and judging.

“We were able to consolidate information and improve efficiency across the board,” said logistics director Pranav Gunhal, a second-year computer science major at UCSB.

At the same time, organizers expanded outreach efforts to amplify the event’s visibility through targeted campaigns and real-time content.

“We focused on staying consistent and meeting people where they were,” said Shreya Chati, a second-year computer science major. “Our goal was to make SB Hacks feel exciting and accessible, even if you weren’t in the room.”

A panel of thirteen judges evaluated participants, considering humor, communication, design, technical innovation, and user empathy.

This year’s grand prize winners were UCSB undergraduates Quinn Godfredsen, Lee, and Nathan So. Their project, “Hey Host!” is an interactive podcast platform that enables users to engage with content in real time through an AI-powered voice agent.

Click here to view the other award-winning teams from SB Hacks XII.

A Professional Honor for James Buckwalter

University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) electrical and computer engineering professor James Buckwalter has been inducted as a senior member of the U.S. National Academy of Inventors (NAI) for his work that has advanced the high-speed and high-frequency integrated-circuit technologies that underpin modern wireless and optoelectronic communication systems. He was cited by the NAI for his “remarkable achievements as an academic inventor and a rising leader in his field.”

“I’m thrilled to learn that the NAI has recognized my efforts at UCSB to translate original research on next-generation wireless and photonic systems into commercialization. Membership in the NAI is a significant honor at this stage of my career, and I am proud to join a distinguished group of faculty inventors at UCSB.”

Like anyone positioned at the leading edge of high-frequency electronics today, Buckwalter focuses a good amount of his attention on not only the influence and power of artificial intelligence, but also the seemingly insatiable demand for electrical power that comes with it. He says that physical AI — the robots, sensors, autonomous vehicles ,and other applications of it, plus the infrastructure that enables them — “offers exciting potential for society but also places exponential demands on the infrastructure that moves data between where it is collected, where it is processed, and where it is put into action.”

“Over the years, UC Santa Barbara has attracted a steady stream of excellent engineers in electrical and computer engineering,” said Umesh Mishra, dean of The Robert Mehrabian College of Engineering. “James Buckwalter stands prominently among the latest generation of impressive talent in the field. He has made important contributions to a range of technologies that find application in electronic devices used everyday around the world, from cellphones and televisions to airliners and spacecraft. We’re extremely proud of him for being recognized by the NAI both as an engineer and as a highly innovative entrepreneur. We send congratulations to Professor Buckwalter on this notable and well-deserved achievement.”

Researchers in power electronics are responding with big advances in optical interconnects to move and process data faster and more efficiently in data centers, on institutional servers, like those in the UCSB High Performance Computing Center — and far beyond. “Ambitious proposals are now being advanced to move AI data into space, which requires a new generation of satellite communications to connect space-based and ground-based data centers,” Buckwalter said, adding, “In my group, we are trying to look forward to the materials and devices — many of the forerunners of which were invented at UCSB — and envision the circuits and systems that will fuel the future of physical AI.”

UC Santa Barbara, and the Santa Barbara region, have a long history as a hotbed of such innovation, and also of entrepreneurship, which has enabled so many inventions to make an impact in the world. Buckwalter brings that innovative spirit to his area of expertise.

Seeing a need and an opportunity, he co-founded the startup PseudolithIC, where he also serves as chief technology officer. The company was started with the goal of making better compound semiconductor circuits, which are indispensable to the radio-frequency (rf) systems found everywhere in modern life. But while the tiny chips are extremely powerful, they are also expensive, they cannot be manufactured quickly, and they are limited in the consumer applications they afford compared to silicon.

Thinking they could do better, Buckwalter and his co-founder and PseudolithIC CEO, Florian Herrault, set out to create CMOS-compatible hybrid rf integrated circuits that would be smaller, better performing, scalable, and as cheap as silicon — exactly what will be needed in those next-generation satellites.

In announcing this year’s cohort of new senior members, NAI wrote that Buckwalter’s work “combines fundamental circuit innovation with real-world deployment, enabling faster data transmission, reduced power consumption, and more efficient wireless infrastructure. By advancing circuit architectures that integrate CMOS with III-V materials, his research helps to push the limits of speed, efficiency, and scalability in next-generation communication systems, [while his] patented technologies contribute directly to innovations in wireless connectivity, sensing, and high-performance electronics.”

Buckwalter joins a network of 945 NAI senior members worldwide. The induction ceremony will be held during NAI’s annual conference in Los Angeles in June.

One Man, Two Prestigious Awards of the Same Name in 2026

Steven DenBaars, the UC Santa Barbara Mitsubishi Distinguished Professor, the director of the Institute for Energy Efficiency (IEE) at UCSB, and an internationally known leader in developing gallium nitride power electronics, has been selected to receive two prestigious awards for 2026. Both are named for the late Nick Holonyak, Jr. (1928-2022), who achieved fame for demonstrating, in 1962, the first semiconductor laser diode to emit visible light.

DenBaars, who has appointments in both the Materials Department and the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at UCSB, will receive one Holonyak Award from Optica in April, and the other from IEEE, also in April.

"It is an honor to receive two awards bearing the name of Nick Holonyak, Jr., whose groundbreaking demonstration of the first visible semiconductor laser paved the way for modern solid‑state lighting and optoelectronics,” DenBaars said. “Recognition from both Optica and IEEE reflects the exceptional work of the students, colleagues, and collaborators at UC Santa Barbara who have helped advance gallium nitride technology from fundamental research to a global industry that enhances energy efficiency and communication worldwide. This acknowledgment underscores UCSB’s long‑standing commitment to connecting foundational materials science with scalable technologies that deliver real-world impact."

“Professor DenBaars has been foundational to developing the world-renowned MOCVD laboratory at UCSB, with its tremendous impact on LEDs and lasers, for which he has received the Holonyak Medals from the IEEE and Optica. He has also opened the lab to other faculty members and their students to conduct research in all applications of electronics and photonics. I have personally benefitted immensely from his collaborative style and his energy. He fully deserves these awards, which also brings the College much honor and joy.”

Optica honored DenBaars for what it described as his “pioneering contributions to high-efficiency GaN LEDs and laser diodes.”

DenBaars has long been a leader in the field and is a pioneer in compound semiconductor optoelectronic materials and devices. In his research, he has addressed key challenges in crystal growth, defect reduction, and device architecture, leading to major improvements in the efficiency, brightness, and reliability of LEDs and laser diodes. Those advances underpin today’s solid-state lighting, high-resolution LED and laser displays, ultraviolet light sources, and emerging optical communication systems.

DenBaars played a central role in establishing gallium nitride (GaN) as a viable and scalable industrial technology, delivering substantial economic and environmental benefits. His contributions enabled the widespread adoption of high-efficiency LED lighting across general illumination, automotive lighting, and display applications, accelerating the transition from energy-intensive legacy lighting to sustainable solid-state solutions while advancing fundamental understanding of GaN materials and device physics.

Together with COE dean, Umesh Mishra, Nobel Laureate Shuji Nakamura, and fellow materials professor James Speck, DenBaars co-founded the Solid State Lighting and Energy Electronics Center (SSLEEC) at UCSB, which Optica described as the world’s leading academic center for solid-state lighting and gallium nitride research.”

IEE announced in December that DenBaars would receive the Nick Holonyak, Jr. Medal for Semiconductor Optoelectronic Technologies, one of twenty-plus high honors given by IEEE for 2026. The award will be presented in April at the Honor Ceremony in New York.

“These global honors recognize individuals whose transformative innovations, scientific breakthroughs, and creative leadership are propelling technology forward for the benefit of humanity,” says an IEEE release, adding that DenBaars was recognized for his “seminal contributions to compound semiconductor optoelectronics, including high-efficiency visible light-emitting diodes, lasers, and LED displays.

The awards, said 2025 IEEE president and CEO, Kathleen Kramer, recognize scientists who have “not only fundamentally advanced technology, but also improved the human condition…The honorees exemplify the ingenuity, scientific excellence, and global impact that define our organization and inspire the next generation.”

DenBaars received his BS in materials and metallurgical engineering from the University of Arizona, and earned his MS and PhD in engineering from the University of Southern California. He has played a pivotal role in advancing academic–industry collaborations, which have helped to shape modern semiconductor innovation. He is a Fellow of Optica, IEEE, and the National Academy of Inventors.

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