The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara will carry out research within three Interdisciplinary Research Groups or IRGs. The three IRGs address fundamental problems in materials research that could not be advanced without contributions from a team of interdisciplinary and collaborative domain experts. The research in every IRG integrates synthesis, theory/computation, and characterization/property measurement to advance fundamental understanding and develop promising materials classes for a range of applications. The scientific challenge for IRG-1 is to understand and develop unprecedented control over the couplings between strain, magnetization, and temperature in single- and multiphase intermetallic compounds to advance technologies including actuation and solid-state refrigeration. For IRG-2, the challenge is to develop novel polymeric ionic liquid chemistries, understand self-assembly and ion transport in these materials, and develop applications that incorporate the emergent properties of multi-valent ion conductivity, light-driven adaptive mechanics, switchable redox activity, and magnetic response. Inspired by natural marine materials, IRG-3 aims to discover how material assembly and innovative processing can help establish the foundational design rules for creating versatile, graded, multiphase soft materials for eventual use applications such as advanced fabrics, packaging, additive manufacturing, and tissue replacements, and as self-shaping, self-healing, and reconfigurable materials platforms. Seed Projects will be competitively awarded for two-year periods, and will bring in collaborative investigators who will take the MRSEC in promising new directions. Alongside the research UCSB MRSEC scientists and education staff are dedicated to improving access to science and to building a dynamic and inclusive workforce of scientists and engineers. The portfolio of education programs has a core focus on undergraduate research opportunities. Outreach activities will also involve K-12 students, support of teachers to create relevant curricula, and the broader lay public, to share current excitement in materials research. Initiatives to develop a diverse workforce emphasize graduate students and post-doctoral fellows.

The goal of this Seed is to develop new materials with unique properties through directed evolution. Through genetic mutation, protein expression, and high throughput materials screening, this Seed is harnessing the power of biological evolution for materials design. Our Seed is developing high throughput protein expression and purification techniques to synthesize sufficient quantities of material for characterization of mechanical and interfacial properties. Parallel efforts are exploring high-throughput screening methods to identify successful mutants within a large genetic library. Our work is developing new materials and understanding how existing biomaterials may have been developed through eons of evolution.

The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at the Ohio State University (OSU), titled Center for Emergent Materials (CEM), performs integrated research on emergent materials and phenomena in magnetoelectronics. The aim of the Center research activities is to advance understanding of the emergent materials and phenomena and to develop highly sophisticated experimental and theoretical tools required to study them, which will lay down the scientific foundation for building future oxide-based electronic devices that can perform multiple functions, and energy-efficient, fast computers that have integrated memory and logic. The Center has two interdisciplinary research groups (IRGs). IRG 1, Towards Spin-Preserving, Heterogeneous Spin Networks, will develop a new understanding of electron-spin injection and transport in low-dimensional, spin-preserving materials such as silicon and carbon. This understanding provides a new materials basis for creating novel high-density spin networks for next-generation computing. IRG 2, Double Perovskite Interfaces and Heterostructures, designs and controls multifunctional properties of innovative double perovskite heterostructures through the understanding of structure, defects, and magnetotransport properties at interfaces. This new knowledge of magnetism in metallic oxides enables important advances in the emerging field of oxide-based electronics. The IRGs are complemented by a Seed Funding program, which provides the necessary flexibility and vitality to CEM in responding swiftly and effectively to the rapidly-changing materials research landscape. Integrated with the research activities, CEM enhances classroom education, creates research internship opportunities, widens the Science-Technology-Engineering-Math (STEM) "pipeline," and enhances diversity in STEM. Activities include an innovative education research program aimed at cognition of materials science concepts, K-12 outreach and visitation programs, undergraduate research programs, and graduate-education enhancement programs. The multidisciplinary OSU materials community is already home to major world-class shared experimental facilities, which are brought to bear on CEM research and education. The Center collaborates with the electronics, storage, and instrumentation industries; national laboratories and institutes; other U.S. universities; and international universities and laboratories in China, India, Germany, and United Kingdom.

IRG #1 seeks to advance fundamental knowledge leading to the development of energy-efficient and novel multifunctional devices for electronic, optoelectronic, storage, sensor and information technologies. The methodologies employed by the group include exploring and exploiting the unique attributes of oxide materials, resulting in two or more functionalities; and developing a thin film platform to integrate multifunctional oxides. The group focuses on oxides which simultaneously exhibit a combination of electrical conductivity, optical transparency, linear and non-linear response to external electrical, magnetic and stress fields. They are also working to validate and optimize coupled phenomena (for example optical transparency with electrical conductivity; ferroelectricity with ferromagnetism). The development of a thin film and heterostructure integration strategy is underway; and first-principles theory and simulation are being coupled with device modeling and characterization

The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at the University of Pennsylvania supports a broadly based interdisciplinary research program on complex nanostructures and materials. The research is carried out in four Interdisciplinary Research Groups (IRG) with appropriate seed projects. The IRG on Functional Biomolecular Materials focuses on developing engineering principles for de novo protein design directed towards creation of novel molecular constructs that carry out natural or novel functions with the ultimate goal of producing selectively functionalized modular materials and devices. A second IRG focuses on Carbon Nanotube-Derived Materials and involves the synthesis, assembly and theory of higher-order structures created from single-walled nanotubes. The IRG on Microscale Soft Materials harnesses theoretical and experimental expertise to design and control the self-assembly of new classes of microstructured colloidal systems with tailored optical, mechanical, rheological and storage properties. An IRG of Multifunctional Complex Oxides designs, synthesizes, characterizes and models novel materials that exhibit highly sensitive responses to external magnetic and electrical fields. The MRSEC is also developing innovative methods of instruction. It is linked to the University of Puerto Rico through a Collaborative to Integrate Research and Education. It hosts a significant program for Research Experiences for Undergraduates and it has initiated a program to provide Research Experiences for Teachers. The Center maintains a large set of shared experimental facilities that provide state of the art instrumentation for the entire University, and act as a focal point for graduate education and for knowledge transfer to industry. Participants in the Center include 36 senior investigators, 12 postdoctoral associates, 29 graduate students, 15 undergraduates, and 5 technicians and other support personnel. Professor Michael Klein directs the MRSEC.

The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at the University of Kentucky focuses on the synthesis, characterization and applications of carbon nanotubes, carbon fibers, and nanotube and fullerene composites. The Center also provides seed funding for new opportunities in related areas. The Center supports efforts in materials education at all levels, including summer undergraduate research experiences and short courses and workshops on carbon materials. The MRSEC also supports shared experimental facilities that are accessible to center participants and to outside users, and has strong research collaborations with other universities and industrial laboratories.

Research in the University of Kentucky MRSEC is organized in an interdisciplinary research group that addresses the science and applications of advanced carbon materials. Participants in the Center currently include 10 senior investigators, 3 postdoctoral associates, 18 graduate students, and 1 administrative support staff. Professor Robert C. Haddon directs the MRSEC.

The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at University of California, Santa Barbara is focused on classes of material that are both chemically and structurally complex with a significant portion of the effort related to interfaces, including those between organic and inorganic materials. IRG 1, Biomaterial Microstructures, has evolved from the Complex Fluids IRG of the previous MRSEC, and carries out the enabling science for the development of biomaterial microstructure and solution aggregates that perform biological or biomimetic functions and serve as model systems for hybrid devices. IRG 2, Solution Synthesis of Inorganics at Molecular and Atomic Interfaces studies the roles of structure-directing molecules and surfaces in the hierarchical organization of inorganics synthesized from solution at low temperatures. IRG 3, Mesoscopic Macromolecular Structures, develops the principles for synthesis and processing of novel macromolecular structures that are heterogeneous on a mesoscopic scale and exploit these structures to control properties for electronic, optical and biotechnological applications. IRG 4, Strongly Non-equilibrium Phenomena in Complex Materials, applies atomic-scale microscopies and advanced scientific computing to bear on a diverse, but closely related, set of problems concerning deformation, failure, and structural reorganization of complex materials. The Center includes significant shared facilities located in a new Materials Research Laboratory building recently completed to house the Center.

The educational activities include development of evaluation methods to measure the degree of success that their outreach programs are having. Outreach projects include Santa Barbara City College Materials Interns; Research Interns in Science and Engineering; Research Experience for Teachers; and UCSB Scienceline, an internet link with Santa Barbara County science teachers and students, impacting both under-represented minority and female students at the college, and pre-college levels. Last year, these programs reached 28 undergraduates (12 women; 2 under-represented minorities) and 5800 pre-college students (3000 women; 4000 under-represented minorities). This is an interdisciplinary MRSEC with 31 faculty members, 15 post-doctoral associates and 24 graduate students from programs in Materials Science and Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, Electrical Engineering, Geology, Mechanical Engineering, Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry. Professor Anthony Cheetham directs the MRSEC.

Senior Investigators: William F. DeGrado & Daniel A. Hammer IRG Leaders; Feng Gai, Mark D. Goulian, Michael L. Klein, Virgil Percec

IRG-3 draws expertise from four departments to design fully integrated functional analogues of cellular mstrongbranes. The goal is highly stable mstrongbranes with integrated functional components including, ion channels, receptors, & signal transducers. strongploying the tools of molecular nanotechnology, the IRG will support both biological & bio-inspired synthetic approaches to these problstrongs.

Elucidating fundamental design principles connecting molecular architecture and charge physics with material properties in polymeric ionic liquids has the potential to revolutionize diverse applications including electrochemical membranes and soft robotics.  IRG-2 aims to understand how materials that incorporate delocalized ionic groups onto or within a low dielectric backbone self-assemble and how charge moves through these structures.  The team will further impart functional properties such as photochromism, multivalent ion conductivity, redox activity, magnetism, and reconfigurability through design and exchange of ions.

The grand challenge of IRG-2 is to develop oxides as semiconductors materials to replace nitride-based systems in the next generation of devices such as solid-state lighting. By exploiting the potential of new growth strategies for oxide semiconductors, controlling and understanding defects and impurities a sound experimental and theoretical understanding of oxides as semiconductors will be developed by a world-class, multidisciplinary team.