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On September 24 and 25, 2026, Liu Yang, Sakia Noorzayee, and Ubaid Manzoor successfully defended their doctoral theses. We extend our heartfelt congratulations on these outstanding achievements and wish them continued success in their careers.

Liu Yang completed her dissertation on precipitation-hardened, refractory metal-based alloys at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in the former working group of Alexander Kauffmann under Martin Heilmaier. She was the first to comprehensively characterize the creep behavior of such novel alloys, which mimic the microstructure of Ni-base superalloys in body-centered cubic systems. Furthermore, she significantly increased the thermal stability and solvus temperature of the precipitates through alloy development.

Sakia Noorzayee completed her dissertation within the IMPRS in the research group of Jan Frenzel. As the raw materials for NiTi shape memory alloys must be extracted in an energy-intensive manner, she investigated various methods for recycling these alloys and the effects of recycling on their microstructure and functional properties. Her dissertation was evaluated by Gunther Eggeler and Jan Frenzel.

Ubaid Mazoor also completed his dissertation within the IMPRS. In the working group of Dierk Raabe, he focused on the experimental investigation of hydrogen-based extraction of critical metals. One of his papers, which was evaluated as part of his cumulative dissertation by Gunther Eggeler and Dierk Raabe, was recently published in Nature.