The National Science Foundation has awarded Brown University a six-year, $9.4-million grant to fund the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, which investigates new materials for industries such electronics and aerospace.
Established in 1996, the center was among the first of 29 such research and education sites nationwide. Along with materials research, it also provides materials science education and training to public school students and teachers as well as Brown undergraduates.
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The new NSF award will support research and teaching by 20 Brown faculty members, most in engineering but also faculty from biology and physics, in three categories:
“We will be applying good science and good engineering to challenging technical problems,” said William Curtin, professor of engineering at Brown and director of the center, in a news release. “The ideas we generate at the center will not only go out to the scientific community, but to industry as well. The work can be applied to make better products we use and rely on every day.”
The grant will also support the center’s educational mission, which includes Brown undergraduate engineering students delivering hands-on science lessons on materials and mechanics at elementary and middle schools across Rhode Island.
Schoolteachers also come to Brown for science and engineering workshops that help them improve classroom lessons, and some even spend summers working side-by-side with faculty to conduct research. In addition, the center hosts undergraduates – many of them minorities – in campus laboratories during the summers, with the goal of attracting and mentoring underrepresented students in the sciences.
The center’s Web site is here.
