High Entropy in Honolulu

This month has been a month of adventures. I just had the most phenomenal experience at the MRS 2026 Spring Meeting---in Honolulu, of all places!!---attending talks, connecting with researchers across disciplines, and finally presenting my own research during a poster session.

This being my first conference, I was certainly very apprehensive at the start. How do you just walk up and talk to PhD students and professors who have an extensive career behind them? How do I introduce myself? What if I feel out of my depth? Fortunately, I very quickly learned that scientists are amazing: smart and thorough, yet humble, encouraging, curious, and extremely open-minded. The first two grad students I talked to during the Sunday Meet & Greet were from Florida State University, and they were so happy to answer all my questions! We talked about high-entropy materials, computational discovery, and general conference advice. Thanks to their initial support, I began to gain the confidence to approach random researchers throughout my time in Honolulu.

It was so refreshing to celebrate science. One of my favorite moments was walking through the halls of the poster session and hearing conversations in Mandarin, Hindi, Russian, and English coming from all sides---a representation of the vibrant global collaboration that embodies scientific research.

Now that I'm saying goodbye to the beautiful weather, ocean views, Kona coffee, and koi fish, there's some takeaways I'd like to record (ranging from technical to non-technical), as well as some of my thoughts.

Cool tech I learned about

• 3D printing everything!
  • Direct energy deposit
    • Creates sturdy materials, including rocket nozzles, with very high purity
    • Can mix as many as 6 different alloys metals at once (in theory more, with greater mechanisms)
  • Digital Light Processing
    • Micrometer scale, and pretty fast (1 m/s)
    • Can use magnets align fibers and to improve anisotropic properties, such as that of carbon fibers. This tech was also used for turbine/rotorcraft blades to reduce weight.
    • Use dual emulsion photoresin to prevent network defects in UV curing
    • You can use two wavelengths of light for soluble and insoluble materials to dissolve support structures chemically (this research used Raman spectroscopy to track conversion of epoxide and slow reaction to prevent excess material build up)
  • Nanoscale printing!
    • Very cool presentation from Caltech post-docs
    • Scaled lasers to a 49-laser array for 100x more sensitive printing and 1 m/s speeds (4 billion volume pixels at once!!)
• Clean-room ready fasteners
  • Very detail-oriented! The core issue originated with "virtual leaks" where gas is getting embedded in the screw threads. Fix: create holes within screws for gas to escape.
    • Also develops O-rings, does outgassing, and bolts and washers.
    • Double seals bags so internal bag is clean room ready
    • Some made of nylon to prevent fingerprinting but worse in humid environments
• Automation of robotic technology for high entropy solutions
• Agentic AI for materials discovery
• Lawrence-Livermore TAOS: nicely integration GUI for materials discovery with given constraints
• Prussian blue: accidentally discovered in the 1700s, fun metal used in biomedical applications
• Integrated ML for evolution of dendritic formation during processing to predict optimal material conditions

Cool science I learned about

• Developing photocatalysts for water splitting to develop hydrogen fuel
  • You need co-catalysts to improve efficiency of the system (first catalyst devotes all its work into splitting water)
  • Goal is to improve solar to hydrogen efficiency by over 5%
  • Recovery area is 1000 sq m
• Solid-state polymers similar to perovskites in 1-D to improve opto-electrical properties
• Precipitating BCC + B2 and FCC + L1 phases for strength-ductility optimization
• Shock induced phase transition in eutetic alloy with W doping
• Quantifying diffusion through DFT, Monte Carlo simulations, and eigenvalues of vacancies
• Screw and edge dislocation velocity can be used to map dislocation beyond short range order over time

Very good Advice

• We value depth over breadth, just take the minimum 4 classes per quarter and do them excellently - Dr. Tasan (MIT)
• Focus on the daily activities over the vision of the end goal. If you don't enjoy your day-to-day life, the end goal won't matter. - Dr. Tasan
• Materials science is like the lowest row of Jenga: if changed, an entire field is disrupted. - Dr. Thean (National University of Singapore)
• Know industrial bottlenecks for academia research---it gives research a purpose. - Dr. Thean (National University of Singapore)
• For pitching to industry: implementation of research always relies on the need. If you can sell the need, industry pays attention. For example, graphene developed by researchers requiring almost two decades to be scaled industrially. - Dr. Thean (National University of Singapore)
• Cost is often looked over as a constraint! Largest barrier to entry of most research in application. - Dr. Park (Yonsei University)

Interesting facts

• Las Vegas is considered the 9th Island (whoa like a 9th planet???) because it has the next highest concentration of Hawaiians after the Hawaiian Islands - learned from one of my Uber drivers
• You can apply to US DOE national lab centers with a research proposal to use facilities for free!

*Special Addition: Advice from me for a high schooler at a conference

• Know your research & own your research. The more confident you are, the more likely people will listen to you. From my experience, being the youngest doesn't discredit you---scientists will treat you with a high level of regard as long as you treat them that way as well.
• Don't hesitate to walk up to people, random or distinguished. At first I was extremely hesitant to do this, but the more and more you overcome your initial fear, the easier it becomes. And it paid off! Some examples:
  • During the first day meet & greet, I walked into two random groups of grad students and introduced myself ("Hi, can I join you guys?....My name is Avni, I'm a high schooler actually, so this is all pretty new to me...Where are you guys from/what's your area of research?"). Both were extremely pleased to talk with me, and it was nice to bump into them later in the conference and see a friendly face .
  • I looked up specific researchers I wanted to talk to (just 2 or 3) on the meeting app and found when they were giving oral presentations. Right before or after the presentations, I made a point to introduce myself to them and explain why I was interested in their work (in a humble, curious way). Ex: "Hi Dr. xxx, my name is Avni, I wanted to introduce myself. Thank you for that presentation! I had actually read your paper on xxx..." They were always happy to discuss research or just general career advice!
  • When attending plenary sessions (large presentations), find a friendly face to sit next to and introduce yourself to them. You never know what connection you might make!
• If you have certain researchers in mind, it also doesn't hurt to message them on LinkedIn to let them know you are there, and also where/when your presentation is. Researchers are usually pretty active on LinkedIn during conferences!
• I also had a stack of business cards with my email and LinkedIn always on hand. I didn't use them often, but I did hand a few out to researchers who asked.
• Lastly, just be curious and humble. You're at the start of your career, and no one expects you to be perfect in any way. 

I have plenty to reflect on & plenty more I'm curious about. One technology I've become incredibly fascinated by is light-based additive manufacturing/3D printing methods for nanoscale architecture. I also remembered how much I love metals!! There's still so much to learn about them.

From my observations, academia also still has a long way to go in really harnessing AI and deep learning potentials for materials science. Current research is still focused on traditional methods like ANNs and decision trees, where new methods like autoencoders, Bayesian optimizers, transformers, and even Agentic AI could be rapidly integrated to accelerate materials innovation. This is a gap that's interesting to explore further.

Thank you MRS for this amazing experience, hopefully I'll be back!!