Monday, May 13, 2002Volume 2, Issue 8
Director's Message
Mark your calendars! The Second Annual MRI Picnic has been scheduled for the afternoon of August 23rd. All are invited. Details will follow.
Regards,
Carlo Pantano
MRI Faculty Spotlight
Jorge Sofo sits in an unassuming office in Osmond Lab connected via a Unix workstation to a parallel computer in Davey Lab containing 100 individual 1.4 GHz Athlon processors with 1.5 GB of RAM each. This kind of high-powered computer is required for the type of work he does: electronic structure calculations. The materials, phenomena and technologies that Sofo investigates vary widely from catalysis to alloy formation to thermoelectrics. What his methods calculate are the energies required to form atoms and molecules. For instance, knowing the total energy or, more specifically, configuration of minimum energy can aid in predicting and understanding a myriad of phenomena including surface mobility, energy barriers and diffusion coefficients.
For the full story go to:
http://www.mri.psu.edu/articles/JorgeSofo/
Bill Introduced Toward Doubling NSF Budget
Members of the House Science Committee introduced legislation this week that would place the National Science Foundation (NSF) on a track to double the agency's budget in five years. The bill, H.R. 4664, authorizes a 15 percent increase for NSF for each of the next three years.
The proposal is similar to the bipartisan effort to double the budget for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which should be completed with the FY 2003 appropriations. While doubling the NIH budget included support from both the Clinton and Bush Administrations, proponents for doubling NSF's budget have yet to win over key people in the Bush White House, including John Marburger, Director of the Office of Science & Technology Policy.
For the full story go to:
http://www.mri.psu.edu/ematerials/v02i08/Bill.pdf
Faculty Contracts & Grants
Materials research accounted for more than $5.9 million in contracts and grants for the month of April! The largest of these contracts and grants(those greater than $200K) are listed below, along with a link to the complete list of contracts and grants. These data are provided by OSPs Strategic Information Management System.
Allara, David; Quantum Computation Using Self-Assembled Molecular Spin Arrays (Revised Budget), U.S. Department of the Army
Anderson, David A; Solaimanian, Mansour; Improved Conditioning Procedure for Predicting the Moisture Susceptibility of HMA Pavements, National Academy of Sciences
Garrison, Barbara; Modeling of Free Electron Laser Ablation II, U.S. Department of the Air Force
German, Randall; Center for Innovative Sintered Products, COP: Department of Community and Economic Development
Peter C. Eklund; Adair, James; Nanoparticle-based Metal Hydrides, Industry
Redwing, Joan; Development of Strain-Engineered AIGalnN Heterostructures for Electronic Device Applications, National Science Foundation
Voigt, Robert C; Komarneni, Sridhar; Voigt, Robert C; Dimishing materials use and air pollutants in foundries via an integrated advanced oxidation process: Characterization of material & pollutants at the nano-scale (TSE01-I), Environmental Protection Agency
Willis, Roy; Magnetic Behavior in Nanoscale Magnetic Heterostructures, National Science Foundation
Wronski, Christopher; Collins, Robert W; Optimization of Phase Engineered a-Si.H Based Multijunction Solar Cells, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
