Johns Hopkins Materials Science and Engineering

MatSci professor Patty McGuiggan's paper on Titan's mysterious "magic islands" just landed in the top 10% most-viewed papers published by Geophysical Research Letters in 2024!

This research was a collaboration between researchers at JHU, University of California, Santa Cruz, and the University of Texas.

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, has an atmosphere full of methane and nitrogen that gets transformed by sunlight into complex organic molecules. It also has deep hydrocarbon lakes on its surface. What happens when all that organic material rains down onto Titan's surface and into its lakes?

Turns out, most of these compounds freeze into solids by the time they reach the ground.

Here's the cool part: some of these solids are porous, like sponges. The nitrogen trapped inside them can make them buoyant enough to float on Titan's lakes, rather than sinking to the bottom.

This might finally explain the "magic islands" - mysterious, temporary bright spots that NASA's Cassini probe spotted on Titan's lakes years ago. McGuiggan's research suggests they could be large, porous rafts of organic ice, floating for a while before eventually sinking as lakebed sediment.

Thanks to everyone who read, shared, and engaged with this work!

Cancer has a sweet tooth—and that craving might be more revealing than scientists once thought.

MatSci Professor Howard Katz and Kevin Yarema in Johns Hopkins Biomedical Engineering have shown that exploiting tumor cells’ appetite for sugar can make stealthy pancreatic cancer proteins easier to detect.

Yarema and Katz's research was funded by a seed grant from the Hirshberg Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research.

Innovative Glycoengineering Strategy Could Reveal New Biomarkers for Pancreatic Cancer While the 5-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer has increased over the last decade to 13%, it continues to be one of the toughest cancers to diagnose and treat. One […]

Baltimore students of all ages came to the Homewood campus last month to be wowed by materials science!

Materials Science Day was a student-run opportunity for community members to make slime, play with hydrogels, build crystal structures out of pretzel sticks and marshmallows, and watch elephant toothpaste foam up in an exothermic reaction.

MSE Assistant Research Professor Patty McGuiggan recently received a school-wide award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising. Dr. McGuiggan has been supporting the personal and professional development of our Materials Science students for 20 years. Congrats, Dr. McGuiggan!