News
2025
March 2025: 2025 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
Prof. Takamura will present an invited talk entitled “Harnessing Interfacial Interactions in Perovskite Oxide Heterostructures” at the 2025 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition in Las Vegas. The talk will be delivered at 2pm on Thursday, March 26, 2025.
January 2025: IEEE Magnetics Society Distinguished Lecturer
Prof. Takamura has been selected as one of three Distinguished Lecturers from the IEEE Magnetics Society. As a Distinguished Lecturer, she will travel around the world for 2025-2027 delivering her talk entitled “Tailoring Magnetic Spin Textures in La0.7Sr0.3MnO3-Based Micromagnets”.
January 2025: Q-MEEN-C work highlighted by the U.S. Department of Energy
A recent Q-MEEN-C publication led by the group of Prof. Andy Kent at New York University including work by Dayne Sasaki was highlighted by the U.S. Department of Energy. The paper is entitled “Voltage-induced magnetic domain evolution in a phase-change material”, Applied Physics Letters, 125, 262406 (2024). You can read the highlight here.
January 2025: 2025 Joint Intermag/MMM Conference
Prof. Takamura will present an oral presentation entitled “Tailoring Spin Textures in La0.7Sr0.3MnO3-based Micromagnets” at the 2025 Joint Intermag/MMM Conference in New Orleans, LA. The talk is scheduled for January 14, 2025 at 11:45 AM.
January 2025: The Molecular Foundry Calendar
Hudson’s image was selected as the cover page as well as the October image for the 2025 Molecular Foundry Calendar.
The description reads:
“Sunset in the Atomic Alps”, by Hudson Shih, Seung Sae Hong, and Yayoi Takamura from UC Davis. This image won first place in the 2024 NanoArt Image contest.
Atomic terrace steps on the (001) facet of a single-crystal membrane of strontium cobalt oxide (Sr2Co2O5). These steps arise due to a small angle of miscut relative to the facet ( <0.5 ° ). If the miscut angle were exactly 0 degrees, no steps would be present! These single crystal oxide membranes provide an ideal material platform for plan-view transmission electron microscope (TEM) imaging at the National Center for Electron Microscopy because they have millimeter lateral dimensions, but nanometer scale thicknesses. With TEM of Sr2Co2O5 membranes, oxygen ion diffusion can be observed within the crystal lattice.
January 2025: Welcome to the Takamura Research Group
Steve Ho joined the Takamura Research Group as a PhD candidate. Welcome!
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November 2024: Return visit to Santiago, Chile
Prof. Takamura was excited to return to Sangtiago, Chile to visit Prof. Heman Bhuyan at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile to continue our collaboration funded with a 2023-24 Seed Grant for International Activities from UC Davis Global Affairs. She presented a talk to the Faculty of Physics entitled “Adventures with Perovskite Oxide Heterostructures and Nanostructures” on Thursday, November 14, 2024.
November 2024: Texas Seminars
Prof. Takamura will travel to Texas A&M University on Nov. 6th, 2024 and University of North Texas on Nov. 8th, 2024 to deliver seminars entitled “Topotactic Transformations in Complex Oxide Thin Films”.
October 2024: 2024 CHMS Research Symposium
August 2024: East Coast Seminars
Prof. Takamura traveled to the east coast to deliver several invited talks at Northeastern University Burlington and Boston campuses, Massachussetts Institute of Technology, and Cornell University. At Cornell, it was nice opportunity to visit her old alma mater and see all the changes to the Materials Science and Engineering Department and the overall campus.
August 2024: Advanced Light Source and Molecular Foundry Users’ Meetings
Prof. Takamura presented a highlight talk entitled “Opportunities for Correlative Microscopy in Complex Oxide Micromagnets” in the topical symposium on “Correlative Microscopy: Experiment, Processing, and Data Management. Hudson Shih presented a poster during the poster session of the Molecular Foundry Users’ Meeting.
August 2024: TRG Alumni Get Together
July 2024: Partnership with National Lab Leverages New Computational Techniques
Read about a recent article published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces on work performed in collaboration with Drs. Hong Sun, Vincenzo Lordi, and Amti Samanta at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory entitled “Unraveling the Correlation between the Interface Structures and Tunable Magnetic Properties of La1–xSrxCoO3−δ/La1–xSrxMnO3−δ Bilayers Using Deep Learning Models”.
June 2024: Graduation 2024!
Congratulations to all the graduates from the UC Davis Materials Science and Engineering Department! A few pictures from the MFA and Ph.D. graduation ceremony, the Masters graduation ceremony, and the Sunday edition of the undergraduate graduation ceremony.
June 2024: College of Engineering Awards Ceremony
Congratulations to the award winners from the UC Davis Materials Science and Engineering Department at the annual UC Davis College of Engineering awards ceremony!
Outstanding Junior Faculty Award: Scott J. McCormack
Teaching Assistant Excellence Award: Hudson Shih
Excellence in Teaching Award: Susan Gentry
Outstanding Senior: Jared Ura
Department Citation: Hannah Darr
Department Citation: Zachary White
Not pictured: Jeffery Gibeling M.S. Thesis Award: Margaret Duncan
June 2024: Congratulations to Izoah and Matthew
Congratulations to Izoah Snowden and Matthew Frame for passing their Ph.D. preliminary examinations!
May 2024: UC Davis Global Affairs Seed Grant for International Activities
Prof. Takamura received a 2023-24 Seed Grant for International Activities from UC Davis Global Affairs to support her work with Prof. Heman Bhuyan from Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. The seed grant will fund student/faculty exchanges between UC Davis and Chile to work on a project researching thin films of complex oxides like titanium dioxide and tantalum pentoxide for use in sustainable energy technologies, such as photovoltaic solar cells and batteries. A news story about the award can be found here.
May 2024: Congratulations to Tanaya Sahoo!
Congratulations to Tanaya Sahoo for being awarded the Ovshinsky Travel Award from the APS Division of Materials Physics to help fund her trip to Minneapolis, MN for the APS March Meeting. A profile of Tanaya’s journey to UC Davis and her future plans can be read here.
April 2024: Congratulations to Hudson Shih!
Congratulations to Hudson Shih and Abigail Herring from the Leite group for being awarded the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research Award. This award will enable Hudson to complete a portion of his dissertation research at the National Center for Electron Microscopy which is part of the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. You can read short news story about the award here.
April 2024: Congratulations to Hudson Shih!
April 2024: Department of Physics, Georgetown University
March 2024: APS March Meeting in Minneapolis, MN
The Takamura Research Group will give multiple presentations at the APS March Meeting in Minneapolis, MN. On Monday, March 4th, 2024, Nathan Tsui will present talk B21.00002 entitled “Determining Antiferromagnetic Moment Orientations from Domain Images by Pixel-by-Pixel Analysis” and Ishmam Nihal will present talk B21.00003 entitled “Spin-flop Coupling at La0.5Sr0.5FeO3/La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 Interfaces” as part of the session B21: Emergent Properties: Antiferromagnetism in Spintronic Devices. On Thursday, March 7, 2024, Tanaya Sahoo will present her talk entitled “Magnetic Domain Image Analysis of La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 Based ‘Donut’ Micromagnets” in the session on Chiral Spin Textures and Dynamics, Including Skyrmions V: Novel Spin Textures. Also on Thursday, Hudson Shih will present his talk W57.00010 entitled “Topotactic Phase Transformations in Freestanding Strontium Cobaltite Membranes”.
Finally, congratulations to Tanaya Sahoo for being awarded the Ovshinsky Travel Award from the APS Division of Materials Physics to help fund her trip to Minneapolis!
January 2024: TRG Group Bowling!
2023
December 2023: Matthew Frame and Izoah Snowden join the TRG
Welcome to Matthew Frame and Izoah Snowden!
November 2023: Hudson Shih is chosen as the Inaugural Recipient of the Amiya Mukherjee Memorial Fellowship
Congratulations to Hudson Shih for being selected as the inaugural recipient of the Amiya Mukherjee Memorial Fellowship. This fellowship was created last year with a generous gift from Bob and Carolyn Caligiuri to honor the legacy of Prof. Emeritus Amiya Mukherjee who is known as the father of the UC Davis Materials Science and Engineering program, and inspired many generations of engineers to pursue the field.
November 2023: Professor Takamura visits the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
Prof. Takamura will visit Prof. Heman Bhuyan from the Faculty of Physics at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile to establish research collaborations between our two groups. She will present a talk entitled “Adventures with Perovskite Oxide Heterostructures and Nanostructures” on Thursday, Nov. 23rd.
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November 2023: 2023 Magnetism and Magnetic Materials Conference
Ishman Nihal, Mingzhen Feng, and Prof. Takamura gave oral presentations at the 2023 Magnetism and Magnetic Materials Conference in Dallas, TX. Ishman presented a talk entitled “Spin-flop Coupling at La0.5Sr0.5FeO3/La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 Interfaces”, while Mingzhen’s talk is entitled “Tuning In-plane Magnetic Anisotropy and Exchange Bias in Epitaxial Complex Oxide Heterostructures”, both in session AE – Complex oxides (Bulk, Films and Heterostructures) on Tuesday morning. Prof. Takamura’s talk is entitled “Tailoring Ferromagnetic and Antiferromagnetic Spin Textures in Nanostructured Complex Oxides” which will be part of the symposium FA, Imaging Magnetic Textures at the Nanoscale on Thursday afternoon. The full program can be found here.
October 2023: Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering Research Symposium
Congratulations to the Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Graduate Student Organization for organizing a wonderful Research Symposium!
Oral Presentation Awards:
1st = Niko Hansen
2nd = Dayne Sasaki
3rd = Meghna Jha
Poster Presentation Awards:
1st = Joaquin Mogollon Santiana
2nd = Toulik Maitra
3rd = Pallavi D. Sambre
September 2023: Workshop on Electronic/Photonic Materials and Devices at UC Davis
The Department of Materials Science and Engineering is happy to host a Workshop on Electronic/Photonic Materials and Devices with generous funding through Dean Corsi’s Next Level Research Vision. This workshop is intended to open dialog between researchers in the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Physics, as well as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for fruitful research collaborations. The agenda for the workshop can be found here.
September 2023: Chemical & Materials Departmental Graduate Seminar at San Jose State University
Prof. Takamura will present a talk entitled “Tailoring Magnetic Spin Textures in Complex Oxide Nanostructures” to the Chemical & Materials Departmental Graduate Seminar at San Jose State University on Friday, September 1st.
August 2023: The 5 W’s of Grant Writing: Basic Research
The Materials Research Society Early Career Professionals Subcommittee will be presenting a webinar on the “The 5 W’s of Grant Writing: Basic Research” on Wednesday, August 2nd from 11:00am – 12:30pm EDT. The event is free to attend, though preregistration is required. The purpose of the webinar is to demystify the grant writing process and equip you with the essential knowledge and tools for success.
Hosts:
- Hanu Arava, Argonne National Laboratory
Speakers:
- Claudia Mewes, Department of Energy
- Robert Meulenberg, National Science Foundation
- Yayoi Takamura, University of California, Davis
- Cristiano Nisoli, Los Alamos National Laboratory
July 2023: Congratulations to Mingzhen Feng
Mingzhen Feng presented her Ph.D. exit seminar entitled “Interfacial Magnetic Phenomena & Topotactic Phase Transformations in Perovskite Oxide Thin Films” to the Department of Materials Science and Engineering on Tuesday, July 11, 2023. She will start at Applied Materials in September. Congratulations!
The group celebrated with a dinner at Paesano’s.
June 2023: 6th International Workshop on Complex Oxides

June 2023: IEEE MagSoc Summer School
Ishmam Nihal was selected to participate in the 2023 IEEE Magnetics Society Summer School held in Carovigno-Bari, Italy from June 11 – 16th, 2023. He presented a poster entitled “Spin-flop coupling in La0.5Sr0.5FeO3/La0.7Sr0.3MnO3: A pathway to antiferromagnetic spintronics”.
May 2023: College of Engineering Awards Ceremony
May 2023: Saying Farewell to Our Dear Friend Ricardo Castro
March 2023: Prof. Takayuki Kojima visits the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UC Davis
As part of the Young Leader Program between TMS and the Japan Institute of Metals and Materials, Prof. Takayuki Kojima visited the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UC Davis on March 17, 2023. He presented his talk entitled “Catalytic properties of Heusler alloys and usefulness of metallurgical synthesis for investigating intermetallic catalysts” and visited the Takamura Research Group.
March 2023: Graduate Student Spotlight: Mingzhen Feng
Mingzhen was featured in a special focus article for International Women’s Day by the UC Davis College of Engineering. Check out her profile here. All the other profiles can be accessed here.
Winter 2023: Visiting Student Yunting Wang Interacts with the Takamura Research Group
Yunting Wang from National Chung Hsing University in Taiwan spent three months at UC Davis to work with the Takamura Research Group. Her visit was sponsored by the Taiwanese Ministry of Education.
January 2023: Flexon Workshop at the Advanced Light Source

January 2023: Welcome to the Takamura Research Group
Asrafuzzaman and Tanaya Sahoo joined the Takamura Research group!