Industry outreach
MRSEC industrial outreach programs vary considerably from one center to another. Center Directors, staff and faculty are generally available to discuss potential collaborations, interactions and partnerships. Involvement in MRSEC activities by industrial scientists and engineers benefits those organizations in many ways. Besides access to the latest scientific discoveries and innovations in the Universities, research programs can often be jointly designed to address issues of mutual interest. Getting to know the students through collaborative interactions prior to being available on the job market also gives the company a considerable edge in hiring the best talent. Indeed, the majority of MRSEC trained students and postdocs are hired by industrial R&D or manufacturing organizations. Since the MRSECs attract faculty that are interested in interdisciplinary and (collaborative research, it is easy to interact with an entire community of researchers through the MRSEC and to build external relationships with faculty inclined to forming partnerships. Many individual MRSEC faculty members are available for consulting and other arrangements as well.
Further details about programs and contact information can be obtained on the individual MRSEC websites.
Industrial Partnerships
The MRSECs are actively engaged with industry to stimulate and facilitate knowledge transfer and strengthen links between University based research and its applications. Many different programs have been locally developed to address specific needs and opportunities. Individual activities may include:
Center researchers are collaborating with spin-off Displaytech (now part of Micron Technologies) to develop ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) materials for application in picoprojectors. The high-quality time sequential color and high brightness enabled by FLC switching speed, and high fill factor and ultra-small pixels achievable with FLCs makes FLC-on-silicon the choice display technology for picoprojectors. FLC-based pico-projection continues to advance with the $99 POPVIDEO iphone projector shown in the image, recently introduced by Micron/Displaytech.
Nebraska MRSEC researchers in collaboration with their colleagues at Universities of Wisconsin and Michigan have predicted and demonstrated that interface engineering may be efficiently used to stabilize ferroelectric polarization at the nanoscale.