Multiscale Modeling of Materials LabSan Diego State UniversityNews
Nov 2, 2026
Professor Wenwu Xu is in Chicago for DARPA’s MXO Spark Tank and Pitch Day. He will present a poster introducing M3 Lab’s research capabilities and looks forward to connecting with DARPA and potential collaborators to explore future research partnerships.
Sep 28, 2026
Dr. Wenwu Xu, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at San Diego State University and director of the M3 Lab, is participating as a facilitator in the ASCENDᴿ Opportunity Advising Think Lab in the Washington, D.C., area, September 28–30, 2026. Organized by the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities (HSRU), the event includes a September 28 networking reception followed by two days of working sessions at the Virginia Tech Executive Briefing Center in Arlington, Virginia. The Think Lab brings together university faculty, advisors, program leaders, students, and defense-sector partners to explore how institutions can help undergraduate and graduate students identify, prepare for, and pursue internships, fellowships, research experiences, and STEM career opportunities. Dr. Xu will facilitate discussions on Student Preparation & Competitiveness on September 29 and Regional Research Programs on September 30. Participants will exchange advising practices, examine barriers to student participation, and identify approaches that could be shared across HSRU institutions. Dr. Xu's involvement builds on his participation in the inaugural ASCENDᴿ Research and Leadership Program, through which he leads a project on Thermal-Elastic Processing for defense-relevant interface engineering. The Think Lab connects this research engagement with his mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students.
ASCENDᴿ eventsSep 23, 2026
Dr. Wenwu Xu, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at San Diego State University and director of the M3 Lab, has joined the Editorial Board of Materials, published by MDPI. He will serve in the Materials Simulation and Design section for a renewable two-year term. In this role, he will support the section's development and serve as an Academic Editor for manuscripts within his areas of expertise. His research combines multiscale modeling and experimental characterization to investigate how processing shapes the microstructure and properties of metals, ceramics, and nanocomposites.
View Dr. Xu's official Materials editorial-board profileSep 2, 2026
Dr. Wenwu Xu has been appointed as an affiliated faculty member of San Diego State University’s Computational Science Research Center (CSRC). Through this appointment, Dr. Xu will advise and support students in the SDSU–UC Irvine Joint Doctoral Program in Computational Science. The affiliation strengthens connections between the M3 Lab’s materials research and computational-science training, creating new opportunities for doctoral student mentorship and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Jul 31, 2026
Congratulations to Diego Cea and Isaiah Clemons for successfully completing their summer internship research program and presenting their Thermal-Elastic Processing research with the M3 Lab. Their project examined grain-boundary modifications in pure copper via thermal-elastic processing, connecting sample preparation, coupled thermal-mechanical testing, and microstructure characterization through the SDSU MESA Summer Undergraduate Research Academy.
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Jul 20, 2026
Dr. Wenwu Xu will lead an $80,000 CSU GUIDE collaboration with co-principal investigators Dr. Luwen (Vivian) Huangfu at San Diego State University and Dr. Ashley Ringer McDonald at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. The AI-JUDGE project will help undergraduate students learn to identify and correct scientifically inaccurate AI-generated simulation code while supporting six paid undergraduate researchers across the two campuses.
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Jul 2, 2026
Diego Cea and Isaiah Clemons, Mechanical Engineering juniors, joined the Multiscale Modeling of Materials Lab through the SDSU MESA Summer Undergraduate Research Academy 2026. During this eight-week, faculty-led research experience, they are working on Thermal-Elastic Processing experiments and characterization, including sample preparation and coupled thermal-mechanical testing, with support from SDSU MESA and MESA California.
Jun 23, 2026
Dr. Wenwu Xu attended the MolSSI ACT-CMS workshop at the Molecular Sciences Software Institute near Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. As a 2025-2027 MolSSI ACT-CMS Faculty Fellow, Dr. Xu is developing "Transforming Materials Modeling Education through LLM-Assisted Coding and HPC Integration for SDSU's Doctoral Engineering Program." The workshop supports faculty fellows in integrating programming, computation, and reusable curriculum modules into molecular and materials science education.
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Jun 5, 2026
Wenwu Xu received a $199,772 ASCEND Research and Leadership Program award from the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities for Thermal-Elastic Processing (TEP) for Defense-Relevant Localized Interface Engineering via Coupled Atomistic Modeling and in Situ Electron Microscopy. The project develops TEP as a localized interface-engineering strategy for defense-relevant structural metals, coupling atomistic modeling with in situ electron microscopy.
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Jun 4, 2026
Prof. Wenwu Xu delivered an invited talk at GFMAT-3 / HTCMC-12 in San Diego on June 4, 2026. His talk, "Flash Sintering of YSZ from Atomistic Modeling and Experiment: Mechanisms and Grain Growth," presented the lab's integrated simulation-experiment work on flash sintering mechanisms, field-enhanced diffusion, and grain growth in yttria-stabilized zirconia.
Jul 15, 2025
SDSU researchers received W.M. Keck Foundation support for research on powerful nanosecond pulses as a possible route to manipulate grain-boundary structures.
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Mar 31, 2025
Dr. Wenwu Xu received the FY2024 Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Invitational Fellowship for Research in Japan. The fellowship supported a 32-day research collaboration in Spring 2025 with host Professor Dr. Motomichi Koyama at Tohoku University, advancing international research exchange in materials science and modeling.
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