The Rising Stars in Soft and Biological Matter Symposium, co-sponsored by UChicago and the University of California San Diego MRSECs, provides a platform for exceptional early-career soft matter, energy materials, and biological matter scientists to present their work. Symposium participants are selected based on a track record of research accomplishments.

The UChicago MRSEC pioneers frameworks for materials discovery, focusing on trainable soft materials, activated architectured materials with dynamic transport properties, and quantum transduction for integrated circuits.

The Harvard MRSEC focuses on unraveling complex phenomena in soft materials with the goal of translating these advances to benefit society.

The primary mission of he MRSEC at UCI is to establish foundational knowledge in materials science and engineering of new classes of materials offering unique and broad functionality via an interplay among design, simulation, synthesis, and advanced characterization.

The NSF-sponsored Wisconsin Materials Research Science and Engineering Center brings together teams of researchers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to tackle grand challenges in the materials science of liquids and glasses and non-equilibrium magnetism.

The University of Washington Molecular Engineering Materials Center, an NSF MRSEC, executes fundamental materials research that aims to push the frontiers of science and accelerate the emergence of future advanced technologies.

CAMM at UT Knoxville, focuses on the exploration, discovery, and design of new materials with properties of critical societal importance for energy, transport, and security advancements.

I-MRSEC has a mission to perform fundamental, innovative research that supports technological applications in areas of societal need, while promoting interdisciplinary materials-focused education and training of students.

This MRSEC brings together researchers from across science and engineering to create materials with new atomic-scale structures and functionalities, and to develop approaches for actively controlling and reconfiguring materials in real time.

The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at the University of
Chicago focuses on two overarching, intertwined issues: the manipulation of structural properties connected through hierarchies of length scales, and the feedback between structural properties and dynamical response. The understanding and control of these issues provides a foundation for the design of the next generation of functional materials, from cooperative spin systems, self-assembled nanostructures, or microfluidic systems, to bio-inorganic hybrid materials. The Center's research is organized into four interdisciplinary groups (IRGs). IRG1 investigates the Dynamical Formation of Structures in Liquids and Elastic Solids that emerge as one follows coarse, macroscopic features to finer and finer length scales, including phenomena such as droplet break-up, crumpling and mesoscale flows. IRG2 aims to design and implement Hierarchically Assembled Molecular Materials composed of molecular assemblies on surfaces that express novel function. IRG3, Jamming and Slow Relaxation in Materials Far from Equilibrium, develops a unifying framework to understand the complex behavior of large classes of materials, from spin systems to supercooled liquids to granular matter, that become stuck in states far from equilibrium and defy description by conventional statistical mechanics. IRG4, Bio-Interfacial Science, develops new routes for designing and controlling the interface between biological entities and man-made materials, including development of biochips for quantitative characterization of biological activities and the assembly of protein units for novel nanostructured materials.

The Center's research benefits from extensive shared experimental facilities that provide research support and training of students. The MRSEC operates a comprehensive program that integrates research with education that includes a seminar and workshop series, a shared student and postdoctoral associates program, a long-term visitors program, as well as outreach programs such as summer research experiences for undergraduates and links with the K-12 level that emphasize attracting and keeping women and minorities in science. The Center also has an industrial partnership program that includes research collaborations, joint workshops, and joint student training activities, as well as a close collaboration with researchers at Argonne National Laboratory.