Intersciplinary Research

Penn State excels in five broad areas of interdisciplinary materials research. In each of these impact areas, a strong group of faculty researchers are working across boundaries to solve important scientific and societal problems. These Areas of Impact are:

The major interdisciplinary institutes at Penn State were created to promote interdisciplinary collaboration across departmental boundaries and to strategically focus Penn State's research strengths on important scientific questions and societal needs. MRI serves as a model for this interdisciplinary approach to research across the diverse field of materials science at Penn State, engaging the physical, biological, and engineering sciences. MRI researchers are chemists, geoscientists, electrical engineers, mathematicians, surgeons, bioengineers, physicists, plant biologists, as well as traditional materials scientists.

In the field of materials research and education, Penn State is a national leader, with more research support from government and industry than any other university in the country. This support allows Penn State to discover and develop new materials and new materials processes in the broad areas of energy, health, national security, and the environment, while educating the next generation of scientists and engineers.

In this section you will find information about MRI's strengths in interdisciplinary materials research, the areas of societal importance that this research impacts, centers of excellence, and news about our research findings.