Jennifer Boum Make, Rutgers University Press

Alex Brostoff, The MIT Press

Jamall Calloway, Columbia University Press

Daniel Cano, Trayecto

Alexandra DeCandia, et.al., Molecular Ecology

Paul Elie, MacMillan Publishers

Tania Gentic, Durham: Duke University Press

Bradley Gorski, Cornell University Press

Nathan Hensley, Chicago University Press

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Kelsey Alejandra Moore, The Public Historian

Rosemary Ndubuizu, The University of North Carolina Press

Felicitas Opwis, Leiden: Brill Publisher

Manus Patten, Harvard University Press

Robert Patterson, Oxford University Press

Cristina Sanz, John Wiley & Sons

Danielle Wiggins, University of Pennsylvania Press

A key figure of merit for a magnet is the ability of its magnetization to strongly prefer a specific direction, known as magnetic anisotropy, which is a cornerstone property for modern magnetic technologies. 

Today, the strongest anisotropy materials for permanent magnets depend heavily on rare-earth elements, which are expensive, environmentally damaging to mine and vulnerable to supply-chain disruptions and geopolitical instability. For thin film applications, certain alloys of iron and platinum have become the materials of choice for next generation magnetic recording media, which contain precious metal platinum. Finding high-performance alternatives based on earth-abundant elements has therefore been a long-standing scientific and technological challenge.

A team led by professors and and graduate student Willie Beeson (G’25) in the at Georgetown University ������Ƶ & Sciences recently discovered a new type of strong magnets based on high entropy borides using earth-abundant transition metals and boron. The materials are both rare-earth-free and precious-metal-free, offering a compelling new strategy for sustainable magnet design. Their results are published in the journal .

“We offer a sustainable approach to making strong magnets that may be used for many applications, from future magnetic recording media to permanent magnets,” said Liu, one of the senior authors of the study. “More importantly, this points to the potential to alleviate the dependence on critical materials for magnets and other applications.”

High-entropy alloys are materials containing five or more elements in near-equal proportions. They have recently emerged as a powerful platform for materials discovery. Their vast compositional space enables access to novel electronic structures and properties. However, most studies of such alloys focus on chemically disordered cubic structures, which are ill-suited for strong magnetic anisotropy that prefers lower crystal symmetry. 

The researchers overcame this limitation by focusing on high-entropy borides, where boron promotes chemical ordering and lower-symmetry crystal structures. They targeted a crystal structure with tetragonal symmetry — imagine stretching a cube along one of its sides — called C16 phase. This structure is known in boron-based materials made from two or three elements but is largely unexplored in more complex materials.

Beeson synthesized these high-entropy borides using a combinatorial sputtering method in Liu’s lab, where atoms of the multiple target materials thoroughly mix by the time they are collected on a heated substrate. This approach also allowed rapid explorations of a large number of material compositions. On a single substrate, about 50 samples can be made simultaneously under identical conditions but with varying compositions. 

Key Findings

• Discovery of a new class of strong magnets: The team realized the first high-entropy borides in the C16 crystal structure using earth-abundant 3d transition metals — those that occupy the first row of the d-block of the periodic table — establishing a new class of ordered high-entropy magnetic materials.
• Anisotropy enhancement through chemical mixing: By introducing multiple 3d transition metals and systematically exploring composition space using a combinatorial co-sputtering approach, the researchers transformed the magnetization to point to a preferred direction with a significantly larger anisotropy.
• Record-level performance without rare-earths: Newly discovered quinary boride compositions exhibit strong magnetic anisotropy approaching that of rare-earth permanent magnets and exceeding previously reported values for rare-earth-free high entropy materials.
• Theory and experiment in agreement: Density functional theory calculations confirm the experimental trends and identify optimized electronic structure, particularly valence electron concentration and effective magnetic moment, as the origin of the enhanced anisotropy.

“We’re continuing exploring even better permanent magnets or recording media with different compositions on different underlying crystal structures,” said Yin, another senior author of the study. “With the help of machine learning we are hoping to make more rapid progress.”

Impact and Applications

The results establish a boron-assisted, high-entropy synthesis strategy for achieving strong magnetic anisotropy using earth-abundant elements alone. These materials are especially promising for applications that demand high anisotropy, such as:

• Heat-assisted magnetic recording media
• Spintronic devices and magnetic tunnel junctions
• Energy-efficient, rare-earth-free permanent magnets

By demonstrating that high magnetic anisotropy can be engineered without rare-earth elements, using only abundant transition metals, this research opens new pathways toward sustainable magnetic technologies. Beyond magnetism, this work highlights the vast and largely unexplored potential of ordered high-entropy materials as a discovery platform for advanced functional properties.

The team also included postdoctoral fellows and , and graduate student Bradley Fugetta (C’23). The work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF), 5E Advanced Materials and the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem Services & Support (ACCESS) program. 

Beeson and Liu are co-inventors on on Boron-based and high-entropy magnetic materials filed by Georgetown University.

Contacts:

Kai Liu
Georgetown University, Department of Physics
Email: kai.liu@georgetown.edu

Gen Yin
Georgetown University, Department of Physics
Email: gen.yin@georgetown.edu

This movement, and the people behind it, are the focus of ’s new book, .

Kato, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology, recalls noticing gardens appearing across neighborhoods still devastated by flooding. 

“I really started to notice that more and more gardens were starting every month or every year,” she said. “And so really, that’s how I got myself interested in, why are they doing this? What is this for? And what is it like to start and operate this kind of relatively larger scale food production in a city that’s still undergoing some major post-disaster recovery redevelopment.”

‘We Can Be the Change’

Kato’s book follows roughly 50 growers in New Orleans who, between 2005 and 2015, turned empty lots and blighted land into spaces of cultivation. Yet these individuals did not see themselves as activists. When Kato asked whether they identified that way, “not one of them said yes,” she said. They wanted change, but they wanted to enact it directly rather than organize around it.

To explain this approach, Kato introduces the concept of prefigurative urbanism — the idea of building the world you want to live in before that world exists, but as individuals rather than as a collective. As trust in government, corporations, and even nonprofits decline, communities increasingly turn toward self-determined action, Kato said.

In drawing similarities between prefigurative urbanism and prefigurative politics — a social movement tactic of manifesting the alternative world through direct action — Kato referenced the Black Panther Party’s breakfast program.

“So instead of petitioning the local school board, or to wait for the local government or even the federal government to implement some program to feed them, they decided to go ahead and feed themselves,” she said. “We also don’t have to wait for these larger changes to happen to receive the benefit of these changes. We can be the change.”

The immediacy of prefigurative urbanism allowed growers to demonstrate what was possible. But it also revealed limits. Because gardens were often maintained by individuals rather than collectives, many struggled to last. Some farmers lost access to land; others no longer had the capacity to keep the work going. The result was a pattern of powerful beginnings, followed by uncertain futures.

Access and Innovation

Structural inequities also shaped who could participate. Starting and sustaining a garden requires time, money, social networks and, in some cases, a comfort with bending legal norms. 

“To be able to start something that’s out of the existing structure requires you to essentially fund yourself,” Kato said. “There is privilege in who gets to break the rules without fearing consequences.”

Kato encourages readers to reconsider what counts as innovation. 

“So much of the concept of innovation has been packaged as something that happens in Silicon Valley,” she said. “But historically, marginalized people had to be innovative because the system excluded them.” 

In New Orleans, Black residents and immigrants have long grown food and fished out of necessity and also to preserve their ancestral cultural heritage. 

“But we were not calling that farm-to-table,” Kato said. “We were not calling that alternative food movement. It’s important to recognize that what we have come to call urban agriculture is not new.”

Civic Imagination

Some participants told Kato that reading the book offered “a good closure … a process for them to make sense of what they went through themselves over the course of the 10 to 15 years.” 

This reflection became central to the project. 

“I wanted to recognize my own growth as a researcher,” Kato said. “I had probably very little understanding of food justice and environmental justice … and I really taught myself that while I was writing this book.” 

She emphasized that neither she nor the growers were the same people they had been when the work began: “We’re all learning and we’re not really a static person.”

Building on that reflection, Kato is continuing her work through a new research-based course next semester. 

“This new project will focus on the gardens and farms in DC that no longer exist,” she said. Students enrolled in the course will be involved in data collection and analysis processes to gain first-hand experience in conducting research. 

“We’re going to interview people who lost access or have left the urban agriculture projects for various reasons, in order to understand why some gardens fail to sustain for a long term and what these losses mean to the individuals involved,” Kato said.

The study adds critical examination of when well-intended projects fail or terminate unexpectedly.

As New Orleans marks the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Gardens of Hope asks readers to reconsider what rebuilding looks like, who gets to imagine change and what forms of labor and care are often overlooked. 

Urban gardening, in this telling, is not a hobby — it is a form of civic imagination practiced with hands in the soil. These gardens did not simply grow food. They dared to grow alternative futures — unfinished, imperfect and deeply human.

The interdisciplinary research institution, which was founded in 1954, aims to bring together scholars and practitioners in a variety of fields in the social and behavioral sciences and cognate disciplines to advance understanding of human behaviors and societal issues.

“My colleagues and I were thrilled that Corey was awarded this highly competitive, prestigious fellowship,” said , a professor and chair of sociology in the ������Ƶ & Sciences. “It’s a nice feather in his cap and it elevates the profile of our department.”

During his time at CASBS, Fields will work on a book project that explores discourse around public health and racial inequality in the U.S. The project will draw on two data sources: immersive interviews from the (AVP) and content analysis of public statements about the COVID-19 pandemic and racial inequality protests, Fields said.

“It is terrific to see the significance of Corey Fields’ research recognized with this prestigious fellowship at CASBS,” said , dean of the College. “Professor Fields is engaged in pathbreaking work that will help us better understand the evolution of contemporary American society. I am eager to see the results of this research, and more generally, I am excited for the future of the study and teaching of sociology at Georgetown.”

How Identity Shapes Experience

The 2025-2026 CASBS fellows class, which arrived at Stanford last month, comprises 33 scholars and practitioners who represent 18 U.S. institutions and 12 international institutions and programs. Fellows will conduct research in various fields such as anthropology, economics, history, political science, psychology and sociology.

Fields has worked at Georgetown since 2017 and joins a list of who have been CASBS fellows, including Tyson, the chair of the Department of Sociology, , a professor in the Department of Linguistics, , a distinguished university professor in the Department of Linguistics and , a distinguished university professor in the biology and psychology departments.

“I’m pretty stoked about it,” Fields said of the fellowship. “At a personal level, it’s an affirmation of the work I’ve done and the stuff I’m looking to do in the future. …To be invited to this interdisciplinary fellowship environment is really cool, because it’s sort of saying, ‘We think the work you’re doing speaks not just to sociologists but to social scientists and humanities folks across the board.’”

Fields, who has a Ph.D. in sociology from Northwestern University, thinks of himself as a cultural sociologist with a focus on identity. “I’m interested in how identity at both the individual and collective level shapes the experience of social life, primarily in the U.S.,” he said.

In the summer of 2020, Fields joined the American Voices Project, a joint initiative of Stanford University and Princeton University to gather public opinion data, as one of the principal investigators. 

Fields intends to combine information from the interviews with public statements from Fortune 500 companies, U.S. News & World Report’s top 100 universities and Forbes’ top 100 nonprofits to explore how Americans experienced the COVID-19 pandemic and engaged with issues of racial inequality. Fields worked with two recent Georgetown graduates, Joshua Gavsie (C’24) and Maxlyn Wallerson (C’25), to collect and analyze the organizational statements. 

“I do think this project will provide some interesting insight into contemporary politics,” Fields said.

A Collective Success

Coming from Georgetown, with its emphasis on the humanities, and being at CASBS has given Fields time to take an interpretive approach to his work and understand how it connects to other disciplines, he said. 

It’s another reminder, Fields said, that the humanities are as important as ever.

“The ability to be able to engage with art, literature and history is central to our capacity to be able to engage with each other and understand what’s going on,” he said. “What’s happened in the past helps you understand what’s happening today. So for me, it feels like the humanities are a central component to producing good citizens. And one of the great things about being at a place like Georgetown is it’s a place that’s thinking about the humanities in ways that connect it to other disciplines.”

For Fields, the CASBS fellowship is not just a personal success but a collective win for the Department of Sociology in the ������Ƶ & Sciences.

“It’s confirmation that the folks in the department are doing important work and producing important research that’s sharpening the field of sociology,” he said. “It speaks to the growth and development of the Georgetown sociology department.”