Tuesday, November 19, 2002Volume 2, Issue 17
Director's Message
The Fifth International Conference on Intelligent Materials will be hosted at Penn State on June 14-17, 2003. This is an opportunity for Penn State to highlight its activities in this area, and for faculty and graduate students to learn about this diverse field and to meet with the international community. I want to encourage you all to consider the submission of an abstract. The topic areas are broad, and focus on systems applications of materials (including nanomaterials). The deadline is December 1st.
Hope to see you all there.
Regards,
Carlo Pantano
MRI Faculty Spotlight
Evangelos Manias speaks enthusiastically about his diverse research interests in polymeric materials. In the four years that he has been at Penn State, Manias' research group has grown to include 5 post docs and 8 graduate students. A large portion of his effort is focused on polymer-inorganic nanocomposites. Manias (Virginia S. and Philip L. Walker Jr. Assistant Professor of Materials Science & Engineering) is at the forefront of one of the newest commercially viable nanomaterials. The inorganics in question are layered silicates (clays or synthetic ceramics) that he disperses into traditional polymers in relatively small volume fractions.
For the full story go to:
http://www.mri.psu.edu/articles/EvangelosManias/
MRI Faculty Advisory Board Meeting Report
The MRI Faculty Advisory Board consists of department heads, consortia directors and prominent Center Faculty. Its primary purposes are to do strategic planning, to review co funding opportunities and requests, to streamline intercollege/interdepartmental equipment acquisitions, and to help design and execute University-wide proposal submissions and research initiatives. The Board members can influence where and how MRI money is allocated. In future issues of e-Materials, we will summarize the important issues that are discussed at the monthly meetings.
The MRI Executive Committee (consisting of the VP for Research, the COE, ECOS and EMS Deans, and the ARL and MRI Directors) concluded that the special interests of the Nanoscale Science and Technology community would be dealt with through a standing sub-committee of MRI (called the Nano-Commission) which Carlo Pantano chairs. Related to this, Dean Wormley has established a Nanofabrication Users Advisory Group (Hank Foley, Chair) who will provide information and advice to the Nano-Commission about the needs and management of central user facilities specific to Micro- and Nanofabrication.
Theresa Mayer reviewed ongoing activities in EE. Several noteworthy observations from her presentation are listed below:
- Penn State is perceived to be one of the leaders in the field of electronic materials
- Extensive and numerous collaborations exist and are growing between faculty who work with electronic materials in various departments and colleges at Penn State; the EE Department has considerable equipment that complements the facilities in the MRL and MRI Buildings and other departments on campus.
- Penn State is a significant player in molecular electronics. Out of 5 major DARPA programs, Penn State is heavily involved with 2; Mayer et al leads one, and Weiss and Allara participate on another with Rice University.
- PSU's ability to create intra- and intercollege research teams makes for strong proposals and has provided us some advantage over other Universities. We are close to critical mass in this area of electronic materials, and much of our recent success can be attributed to MRI and Penn State's administrative support of interdisciplinary research.
Eva Pell has established, under the University Research Council, an Equipment Issues subcommittee (Karin Foley, Chair) to reduce duplicate purchases of equipment and to identify better management methods for our equipment resources including:
- User-financed, support facilities such as machine shops and instrument shops
- User-financed, instrument facilities such as the NMR, Mass Spectrometry, X-ray, - Fermentation, sequencers, electron microscopes, etc.
- Shared support facilities for which no user fees are collected, such as cold rooms, autoclaves, stills, incubators, ovens, centrifuges, etc
- The many, many pieces of equipment in researchers' laboratories which may or may not be fully utilized and may or may not be adequately maintained and/or get replaced in a timely manner.
Carlo summarized the subcommittee recommendations:
- Develop an Inventory of Equipment and Instrumentation
- Aggressively set charge rates for user-financed facilities
- Facilitate equipment sharing to reduce individual start-up package needs, reduce Central Administration cost-sharing expense, reduce space usage, and maximize utilization to reduce user fees.
- Explore development of new budget models to facilitate timely replacement of key support equipment
Carlo announced that a new materials research building is now a priority for the university, and that President Spanier and Eva Pell are actively helping with the identification of funding which will most probably be coming from the State. Under consideration is a 135,000 ft building (assignable space) costing roughly $80 million. The funds to do the engineering will be available in 2004. Consideration is being given to locating it on the West Campus.
Contracts & Grants
Materials research accounted for more than $1.7 million in contracts and grants for the month of October! The largest of these contracts and grants (those greater than $100K) 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.
Agrawal, Dinesh; Improved Economics in Deep Well Drilling, U.S. Department of Energy
Fonash, Stephen; Request for Supplement Support, National Nanofabrication Users Network (NNUN), Cornell University
Rose, Joseph; An Ultrasonic Sensor System for Calcium Fluoride Crystal Manufacture, Industry
Nanofabrication Facility Users Advisory Committee Meeting
To view the Minutes from the October 10, 2002 meeting go to:
http://www.mri.psu.edu/facilities/NNIN/
Materials Seminars
Thursday, December 05, 2002Time: 11:15 AMTuesday, December 10, 2002
Location: 22 Deike Bldg
Title: Combinations of Functionality and Topology in Macromolecular Design
Speaker: Tim Long, Associate Professor of Polymer Chemistry, Virginia Tech
Time: 11:15 AM
Location: 108 Wartik Laboratory
Title: Cells, Gels, and Tissue Engineering
Speaker: Dr. Kristi S. Anseth, University of Colorado
Funding Opportunities
Consortium for Premium Carbon Products from Coal (CPCPC) RFP
Deadline: January 3, 2003
The CPCPC is soliciting proposals for applied research on carbon materials that is open to all PSU researchers.
