Succinct definition of thematic area

This initiative primarily fits under SAF Theme 8, Matter Science and Engineering: from theory to application, although has major overlap with Theme 5 (Environmental Sustainability), Theme 6 (Energy and Energy Systems), and Theme 7 (Information, Computational, and Data Sciences and Engineering) and minor overlap with Theme 4 (Innovation and Entrepreneurship).

This proposal is related to, and draws inspiration from, a number of proposals from the first round of the strategic academic focusing, including the Applied Math proposal, the Chemistry and Chemical Biology proposal, the Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) Graduate Group proposal, the MSE Undergraduate Program proposal, the Next Generation Materials in Physics – Active Multifunctional Matter proposal, and the UC Merced Center for Theory and Computation proposal.

Intellectual components of the strategic initiative

In June, 2011, President Barack Obama’s National Science and Technology Council announced the Materials Genome Initiative for Global Competitiveness, a new funding initiative through the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense. This initiative has three components, 1) Developing a materials innovation infrastructure, 2) Achieving national goals with advanced materials, and 3) Equipping the next-generation materials workforce, with the overall goal of promoting interdisciplinary efforts to discover, develop, manufacture, deploy, and recycle advanced materials faster and cheaper than at present. The expectation is that this goal will be achieved by transforming the way materials are currently designed, and instead combine theory and experiment into an iterative design plan, summarized in figure 1, with a focus on designing advanced materials that address issues of pressing national interest.

While this is a fairly new funding initiative, there have been a few notable achievements. In particular, the success of the NanoHUB website, which hosts a collection of simulation programs, presentations, courses, learning modules, podcasts, animations, and teaching materials on nanoscale phenomena, and the Materials Project website, which houses a database of materials properties for tens of thousands of potential battery materials as well as a variety of open-source tools for material analysis and scientific workflow, demonstrates the need for an improved data sharing and data mining infrastructure.

Figure 1 - Iterative design plan for advanced materials

UCM’s role in this Theme

While the Materials Genome Initiative for Global Competitiveness is a focused national funding initiative, the underlying ideas form a strong organizational framework to which it makes sense to map parts of SNS and SoE, and to which UC Merced is well-positioned to contribute. For example, research currently being done in Applied Math corresponds to the data mining and discovery steps of the materials design process (fig 1), while research in Chemistry and Physics maps closely to the discovery, development, and optimization steps and research in Engineering corresponds to the discovery, development, optimization, and system design steps. In addition, the vast majority of research in SNS and SoE focuses on issues of national need, such as advanced materials for energy generation and storage, human welfare, and national security.

Although research at UC Merced can be mapped to these design steps, we currently are much stronger in some areas than in others. For instance, when compared to other research institutions, we have a much higher fraction of faculty working in theoretical and computational fields, an important cornerstone for future materials design. Additionally, our diverse student body better represents the America of tomorrow, rather than the America of yesterday, and is an important path towards training a diverse group of future scientists and engineers better able to tackle difficult problems with creative solutions. Finally, UC Merced’s founding faculty recognized the importance of researching important problems, which is why so many of our current faculty focus their research on areas identified as issues of national need. These strengths are evidenced by our ability to secure highly competitive funding from diverse programs such as NSF’s Solar Initiative program, which requires a collaborative effort between an engineer, a chemist, and a mathematician, and multiple NSF REU programs, such as the DESCARTES program in Applied Math, which trains students in analyzing massive data sets, and the Applications in Modern Materials (AiMM) program in Chemistry and Physics.

While UC Merced has some notable strengths in materials research, there are two potential routes for investment in this area that will lead to a more competitive program. The first route is to build up our current strengths by hiring more research faculty in applied math, chemistry, physics, and engineering who have interests aligned with this initiative. The second route is to diversify our strengths by hiring additional faculty who can contribute to other steps of the design plan shown in figure 1, in particular engineers who focus on certifying, manufacturing, and deploying products, and economists, social scientists, and political scientists who study societal and policy affects on adopting new materials. In addition to these routes, it would be extremely beneficial to develop industrial partnerships, to better address real world problems impacted by current and future research at UC Merced as well as to ensure our students are receiving the training necessary to succeed after they graduate.

What bylaw units/grad groups might participate, and how would they participate?

The bylaw units that would likely participate are Applied Math (Harish Bhat, François Blanchette, Boaz Ilan, Arnold Kim, Roummel Marcia, Mayya Tokman), Chemistry and Chemical Biology (Jason Hein, Hrant Hratchian, Christine Isborn, Anne Meyers Kelley, David Kelley, Erik Menke, Aleksandr Noy, Jess Vickery, Tao Ye), Engineering (Venkattraman Ayyaswamy, Wei-Chun Chin, Lilian Davila, Daniel Hirleman, Min Hwan Lee, Valerie Leppert, Jennifer Lu, Ashlie Martini, Kara McCloskey, Michael Modest, Vincent Tung, Christopher Viney), and Physics (Chih-Chun Chien, Sai Ghosh, Ajay Gopinathan, Linda Hirst, Carrie Menke, Kevin Mitchell, Michael Scheibner, Jay Sharping, Lin Tian, Roland Winston, Jing Xu). The graduate groups that would likely participate are Applied Math, Biological Engineering and Small-Scale Technologies, Chemical and Chemical Biology, Mechanical Engineering, and Physics.

The faculty in these units and graduate groups contribute to all three components of the Materials Genome Initiative, listed above. Specifically, for component 1 (developing a materials innovation infrastructure) all the faculty listed above focus their research efforts on one or more steps in the iterative design plan shown in figure 1. For component 2 (achieving national goals with advanced materials) nearly all the research performed by the above faculty is directly related to the design and synthesis of advanced material in areas identified as a national need, whether quantum dots for solar cells, cardiac tissue engineering, or graphene electrodes for Li-ion batteries. Finally, for component 3 (equipping the next-generation materials workforce) these groups contribute at the graduate level to ensure that our masters and Ph.D. graduates have the tools and training necessary to succeed in industry and academia, while at the undergraduate level these groups will use traditional coursework, independent study, and research opportunities to prepare our bachelor students for either jobs in industry or advanced study in graduate or professional programs.

General description of special programmatic needs (specialized space requirements, special library collections, etc.).

As this initiative is primarily focused on the design and synthesis of new materials, successful implementation of this initiative will require laboratory space (wet and dry, science and engineering), computational resources (space and equipment), and additional major research instrumentation (Electron microscopy, NMR, XRD, mass spec, etc.) beyond what currently exists on campus.