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March
17, 2003 |
NSF Grant of $3.5 Million Establishes
Global Laboratory for Materials Science
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Thomas Griffin |
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Professor Krishna Rajan will lead the new
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Rensselaer has been awarded a five-year, $3.5 million
grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish an
International Materials Institute (IMI) for Materials Informatics
and Combinatorial Materials Science. It is one of the first centers
of its kind to be awarded funding by the NSF.
Housed at Rensselaer, the Combinatorial Sciences
and Materials Informatics Collaboratory (CoSMIC) will develop
leading-edge experimental and computational tools for the high-speed
discovery of radically new materials and processes. University
partners include the University of Maryland and Florida International
University — the nation’s leading Hispanic-serving
institution.
The research goal of Rensselaer’s CoSMIC-IMI
is to produce radically new materials engineered from atomic scale
design right to final application needs. Examples include the
development of new magnetic materials capable of storing huge
amounts of data — far beyond what is currently conceivable
today — or the next-generation ultra-high temperature materials
for more efficient, cleaner engines in nearly every transportation
sector.
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The
Combinatorial Sciences and Materials Informatics Collaboratory
(CoSMIC) will develop leading-edge experimental and computational
tools for the high-speed discovery of radically new materials
and processes.
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“This award confirms Rensselaer as a major
player in the area of materials science,” said Rensselaer
President Shirley Ann Jackson. “The Institute has long been
conducting research at the leading edge of materials science and
engineering at the intersection of nanotechnology, biotechnology,
and information technology. This center binds these disciplines
together on a global level that is expected to result in rapid,
important scientific advancements.”
Using the INTERNET2, Rensselaer’s CoSMIC-IMI
will connect a consortium of laboratories from 10 countries across
Europe, Japan, the Middle East, South America, Canada, and the
United States. These laboratories are world leaders in materials
theory and modeling, materials science databases, high throughput
experimentation techniques and combinatorial materials synthesis
and processing.
“We want to do for materials science what
the Human Genome Project did for biotechnology,” says Krishna
Rajan, director of Rensselaer’s IMI and a professor of materials
science and engineering and of information technology. “This
is information technology in direct application to scientific
research and experimentation.”
To read more, go to Press
Release
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