Monday, July 11, 2005Volume 5, Issue 4
Director's Message
By now, you are probably all aware that Governor Rendell officially released $40M in state funding to Penn State to construct a new building for materials research. Penn State is now committed to the construction of an $80M building which is intended to create the space and the environment for Penn State to remain pre-eminent in materials research and learning. It will be dedicated to interdisciplinary research integrating materials science with the engineering, biological, medical and physical sciences. It will serve to attract faculty and programs that are innovative and cross-disciplinary, and to train both undergraduate and graduate students to work in teams with a common purpose. It will also serve as the anchor for technology-based economic development in the I-99 Keystone Innovation Zone and the Commonwealth. We expect it to be a major physical and intellectual element of the campus and the Commonwealth. Here is the status:
- The location for this new building will be finalized and announced within 2-3 months; the Bus Station/Post-House property and Pollock Field are still the primary sites under consideration. The area between the MRL Building and University Drive is an alternate location that will be considered if necessary;
- A Committee will be established next month to outline the specific themes, user facilities, and space descriptions for the new building; proposals will be solicited so that faculty-at-large may suggest new group activities and facilities; a consultant with experience in the design and special needs of a state-of-the-art research building will be available to the Committee. This Committee will have the 05-06 academic year to complete their work;
- During the 06-07 academic year, OPP will select an architect and contract the engineering design;
- Construction is scheduled to begin in 07-08, and be complete within 18 months.
I encourage each and every one of you to think about, and let us know, the ways in which this new building can best represent the University's commitment to interdisciplinary materials research, to innovative education and to translational research for economic development in the Centre Region, the Commonwealth and the Nation. We have much work ahead of us, but if we work as a team, we and our successors will surely benefit from this important endeavor.
Regards,
Carlo Pantano
Faculty Get-Togethers
With the goal of stimulating collaborative multi-investigator proposals and programs, and hopefully new centers of excellence, MRI will once again convene a series of informal presentations and technical discussions over the next few weeks.
These "Summer Get-Togethers" will be held on Thursday afternoons at 4:00 p.m. They will begin with a 15 minute presentation, followed by discussion and a social hour with light refreshments. And of course all are encouraged to continue the dialogue into the evening.
If you have an idea for a collaborative program and are willing to champion the effort, let us know and we will schedule a slot for you. If there are topics already scheduled for discussion that are of interest to you, feel free to contact the speaker/discussion leader and/or bring a few view graphs to the get-together. These are initiatives in the formative stages. We welcome your interests and contributions to the effort.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
Paul Weiss
4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Nanoscale Science
Nittany Lion Inn - Faculty Staff Club
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Mark Horn and Susan Trolier-McKinstry
4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Bolometers and IR Sensor Materials
Nittany Lion Inn - Faculty Staff Club
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Ram Rajagopalan, Hank Foley and Tony Perrotta
4:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Carbon
Nittany Lion Inn - Faculty Staff Club
Faculty Spotlight
The research interests of Dr. Gennady Gildenblat, professor of electrical engineering, include transport physics, physics of semiconductors and semiconductor devices, novel device structures and theoretical foundations of electronics. He has over 130 publications, including several books, and holds US patents in these fields.
Some of the recent work of Dr. Gildenblat is in the area of compact MOSFET models - a mathematical description of metal-semiconductor-field-effect transistors that is sufficiently simple for use in circuit simulators used to design advanced integrated circuits. In contrast to traditional compact models, "surface-potential-based modeling" -the approach of the Penn State modeling group -is based on the essential device physics. The development of this approach was enabled by solving several long-standing mathematical problems of the field-effect transistor theory.
MRI Affiliated Faculty Promotions
Congratulations to the following faculty members who were recently promoted
- Craig A. Grimes, Professor of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering
- Peter J. Heaney, Professor of Geosciences, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences
- Ying Liu, Professor of Physics, Eberly College of Science
- Janna K. Maranas, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering
- Richard P. Martukanitz, Senior Research Associate, Laser Processing, Applied Research Laboratory
- Theresa S. Mayer, Professor of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering
- Michael V. Pishko, Professor of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering
- Christopher A. Siedlecki, Associate Professor of Surgery and Bioengineering, College of Medicine, Milton S. Hershey Medical Center
- Paul J. Tikalsky, Professor of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering
- Darrell Velegol, Professor of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering
New Funding Request Service Implemented
MRI contributes to funding joint faculty positions, seed grants, equipment matching and purchases, graduate student support, Center initiatives, and other activities related to Materials research. In the past, requestors talked with Carlo, sent him an email, or requested in writing fund commitments from MRI. The new process will require all requests to be submitted electronically through the MRI web site. Bookmark the page http://www.mri.psu.edu/FundingRequests/ which can also be found under the MRI intranet heading on the web page. After logging in using your PSU pop id and password, it is a simple three-step process in which the requestor enters general information, uploads any related electronic files and allocates the total funds over the fiscal years of your request.
Once the request is entered, Carlo receives an email notifying him of the request which he will then act on, either by approving the request for funding if it is an outright request, approving for commitment if it is matching on a proposal, or rejecting. At any stage of the process, Carlo may ask for additional information, or you can edit or add information to the request via the built-in discussion forum.
We have moved to the electronic request system to enhance your ability and ours to track these requests. When you login, you will be given the option to view all of your requests, and it will include fund and cost center information if the request has been approved for funding. In the future, we hope to be able to add approximate balance information also. In addition any change in status to your account will generate emails to you notifying you of the status change. If you have any email correspondence associated with the request, please use the discussion forum so that it becomes a part of the permanent record of the request.
Please let Bob Cornwall know of any questions or problems with using the system.
Industry Challenges Scientists to Find New Functionality in Glasses
Representative from the glass industry challenged a gathering of more than 100 international glass scientists to find innovative ways of making glass stronger, cheaper, and more environmentally green at a glass conference held at Penn State in June, 2005. The 1st International Materials Institute Workshop on New Functionality in Glasses brought scientists from 12 countries to the Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center to discuss their research in areas as diverse as the use of ultra fast lasers to write 3-dimensional patterns inside glass to the development of hydrogen-filled hollow glass microspheres to shield astronauts from high-energy particle radiation on long duration spaceflights.
Glass manufacturing in the U.S. employs 150,000 skilled workers and produces $22 billion worth of product annually. More than just the common material used in buildings and automobiles, glass functions in biotechnology to help build and repair bone and tissue, in DNA sequencing and in high-power lasers, as components in high performance fuel cells, as optical fiber for telecommunications, even for the long-term storage of nuclear waste. Glass is environmentally friendly, in both its manufacture and its near total recyclability, is exceptionally durable chemically, and has unique optical properties.
New Associate Editor Hired
We are proud to announce a new addition to the MRI staff: Walt Mills has taken on the responsibility of Associate Editor Publications for the Materials Research Institute. Walt will write articles, promotional information and publicity materials related to research activities university-wide. Walt is responsible for enhancing the visibility of materials activities at Penn State through tools similar to Research Penn State and Engineering Penn State. Additionally, he will monitor and evaluate research results and news worthiness, develop brochures, write articles and faculty profiles, and provide web page content for the MRI site. Walt's office is 108 MRL Bldg.
Walt attended Old Dominion University and Florida Atlantic University, where he received a B.A. in English. Prior to coming to Penn State, Walt worked as a freelance writer, copywriter and editor. His column, At the Middle Passage, has been published in the Centre Daily Times since 1996. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Spring Mills.
MRI Annual Picnic
Mark your calendars for the 5th Annual MRI Picnic scheduled for the afternoon of August 19th at Tussey Mountain. All are invited. Details to follow.Contracts and Grants
Materials research accounted for more than $15.3 million in contracts and grants for the months of May and June! 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.
Harris, Karl A; Management of the Electro-Optics Manufacturing Technology, U.S. Department of the Navy
Krauthammer, Theodor; Advanced Structural Analysis and Damage Assessment Tool in Support of DOD Force Protection Needs, U.S. Department of the Army
Schlom, Darrell G; Chen, Long-Qing; Gopalan, Venkatraman; Xi, Xiaoxing; NIRT: Strain-Enhanced Nanoscale Ferroelectrics, National Science Foundation
Snyder, David W; Everson, William J; Large Area Sapphire SSR and Polishing, U.S. Department of the Navy
Snyder, David W; Everson, William J; Novel Crystals for Imaging and Communications, U.S. Department of the Navy
Wang, Chao-Yang; Improvement & Validation of Two-Phase Numerical Model for Polymer Electolyte Fuel Cells, Industry
For a complete list of the contracts and grants for May and June go to:
http://www.mri.psu.edu/awards.asp?awardperiod=0506
Funding Opportunities
- MISC - Request for White Papers: Packaging Science - Deadline: 7/13/2005
- NAVY - Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) - Deadline: 8/25/2005
- NSF - Solid-state Chemistry - Deadline: 11/4/2005
- ARMY - Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) - Deadline: 8/25/2005
- NSF - Ceramics - Deadline: 11/4/2005
- NSF - Condensed Matter Physics (CMP) - Deadline: 11/4/2005
- NSF - Electronic Materials - Deadline: 11/4/2005
- NSF - Materials Theory - Deadline: 11/4/2005
- NSF - Metals - Deadline: 11/4/2005
- NSF - Polymers - Deadline: 11/4/2005
Materials Seminars
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
9:45 AM - 114 MRI Bldg
"Focused Ion Beam (FIB)"
Joe Kulik, Materials Characterization Lab
Series - Summer Characterization Open House
11:00 AM - 114 MRI Bldg
"TEM sample preparation"
Joe Kulik, Materials Characterization Lab
Series - Summer Characterization Open House
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
9:45 AM - 250 MRL Bldg.
"Orientation imaging microscopy (OIM/EBSD)"
Maria Klimkiewicz, Materials Characterization Lab
Series - Summer Characterization Open House
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
9:45 AM - 541 Deike Bldg.
"Chemical analysis (ICP, ICP-MS)"
Henry Gong & John Kittleson, Materials Characterization Lab
Series - Summer Characterization Open House
