Educational and Outreach Activities in Kadkhodaei’s Lab

Jun 20, 2025
Kadkhodaei and two Ph.D. students in the 2023 Futures Unlimited Workshop for gender-expansive middle school students.
Kadkhodaei and two Ph.D. students in the 2023 Futures Unlimited Workshop for gender-expansive middle school students.

Workforce Development:

This project has supported two PhD students and one undergraduate student for the 2023-2024 academic year & summer. As a result, one PhD degree is awarded.

Outreach Activities:

Kadkhodaei and her team participated in several outreach activities, including a scientific demonstration to middle school gender-expansive students in the 2023 "Futures Unlimited" workshop at Oakton Community College (see image). 

Educational Impacts:

While science-based computational methods have emerged as a powerful means for future materials design and engineering, many engineering students are still under-exposed. Kadkhodaei leads a collaborative effort to integrate the ASM-awarded Materials Genome Toolkit into several courses in the materials program curriculum at UIC (see image). Kadkhodaei has also formed and advised a team of undergraduate students participating in the 2023 nationwide ASM materials undergraduate design competitions. The undergraduate research efforts resulted in the publication of a research article authored solely by undergraduate students (see image).

Journal article by undergraduate students in Kadkhodaei’s lab

Authors

Sara Kadkhodaei (University of Illinois-Chicago)

Additional Materials

Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future (DMREF)