Sometimes yesterday’s innovation becomes today’s burden. That’s true, to a large extent, with plastic. The plastics industry came into its own during World War II, capitalizing on the material’s pliability to make synthetic goods, which helped conserve natural resources for the war effort.

Natalie Kadlubowski is Purdue’s 50th Goldwater Scholar. The highly competitive award offers up to $7,500 toward tuition, fees and board to sophomores and juniors seeking research careers.

Purdue Online Engineering’s Design for Security badge program prepares professional engineers to better understand and identify areas of product cyber-vulnerability and risk. The courses are designed and taught by an interdisciplinary group of Purdue faculty affiliated with Purdue’s Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS), a global leader in research and education in areas of cyber security crucial to the protection of critical systems and infrastructure.

How reliable and resilient is an all-digital nuclear reactor? Scientists and engineers at Purdue University hope to answer that question by supporting public and private research partnerships at a first-of-its-kind, digitally operated nuclear reactor, licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Purdue University and Cranfield University have partnered to support the Department of Defense (DoD) by developing a tailored Master’s Degree program at NSWC Crane. The jointly delivered, or dual Master’s Degree, will be in Defense Engineering and Technology with a concentration in Expeditionary Warfare once officially finalized.

Robert Bean, an associate professor of nuclear engineering at Purdue University, tells TIME that there is a different set of concerns for nuclear reactors at sea than for reactors on land. Reactors at sea must be protected from storms, and have differing security concerns because they can be approached by other ships.

A Purdue Civil Engineering team is collecting data through sensors the group designed to track concrete strength development in real time through measurements of hydration, stiffness, compressive strength and other properties of concrete.

Two Aeronautics and Astronautics faculty members and Mung Chiang, the John A. Edwardson Dean of the College of Engineering, joined Indiana Governor Eric J. Holcomb as speakers at the AIAA Propulsion and Energy Forum in Indianapolis on Aug. 20.

A group from Purdue University led by engineering professor and researcher David Ebert is working to help farmers through the Big Ideas program orchestrated by the university’s Discovery Park multidisciplinary research facility in West Lafayette.

Today, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science announced selection of 73 scientists from across the nation – including 27 from DOE’s national laboratories and 46 from U.S. universities – to receive significant funding for research as part of DOE’s Early Career Research Program. The effort, now in its tenth year, is designed to bolster the nation’s scientific workforce by providing support to exceptional researchers during the crucial early career years, when many scientists do their most formative work.