Seed Funding Program

About the OSU Materials Research Seed Grant Program

An aggressive Seed Funding program complements the research structured under the IRGs by providing an agile support mechanism for the very latest developments in materials research, and by identifying and nurturing future leaders in the field. This allows the CEM to have an impact beyond the IRGs membership.

The CEM is one of three partners in the OSU Materials Research Seed Grant Program. This integrated seed program, open to the entire materials research community at The Ohio State University, was started in 2010 to jointly leverage the resources of CEM, the Center for Exploration of Novel Complex Materials (ENCOMM), and the Institute for Materials Research (IMR).

2023-2024 Materials Research Seed Grant Program RFP


CEM Seed Awards 2023

  • Jinwoo Hwang, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, with Yuan-Ming Lu and Jyoti Katoch (Carngie Mellon), Department of Physics, “Topological States Beyond Crystaline Materials.”
  • Jeanie Lau, Department of Physics, with Roberto Myers and Wolfgang Windl, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, “In situ Control of Band Gaps & Intersubband Transition of 2D Semiconductors.”

CEM Seed Awards 2022

  • Jinghua Li, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, “Optical-electrical coupling behavior in semiconductor nanomembranes.:
  • Hannah Shafaat, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, “Vanadium-substituted proteins as molecular qubits.”
  • Jeanie Lau, Department of Physics, with Roberto Myers and Wolfgang Windl, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, “In situ Electrical Control of Band Gaps of 2D Semiconductors.
  • Yiying Wu with Robert Baker, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Wolfgang Windl, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, “Designing Chiral Halide Perovskites for Chirality-Induced Spin Selectivity.

CEM Seed Awards 2021

  • Xiaoxue Wang, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, “Analog Tuning, Ultra Low Energy Consuming, Non-volatile Organic Memristive Devices Based on Chemical Vapor Deposition Polymers for Neuromorphic Computing.”
  • Alok Sutradhar, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, “Coupled Mechanical and Electromagnetic Topology Optimized Design of Photonics Components.”
  • Jinghua Li, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, “Investigating Charge Transport Behavior and Electrical Coupling Effect in Si Thin-Film Electronics with ssDNA Interfaces during Biosensing.”
  • Shiyu Zhang, Department of Chemistry, “Sustainable Organic Electrode Materials.”

CEM Seed Awards 2018

The area targeted for 2018 was PROTO-IRGs.

  • Jinwoo Hwang, Department of Materials Science and Engineering,”Structure, Defects and Emergent Properties at Magnetic Interfaces”
  • Sanjay Krishna, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, “Metamorphic Narrow Gap Antimonide Materials for Topological Insulators”
  • Jeanie Lau, Department of Physics, “Tunable Ferromagnetic and Antiferromagnetic Spintronics Based on Graphene Quantum Hall States”
  • Yiying Wu, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, “Anionic Functional Materials”

CEM Seed Awards 2017

The area targeted for 2017 was PROTO-IRGs.

  • Jinwoo Hwang, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, “Structure, Defects, and Emergent Properties at Magnetic Oxide Interfaces.”
  • Mohit Randeria, Department of Physics, “Spin Textures in Chiral Magnetic Materials.”

CEM Seed Awards 2016

  • Jinwoo Hwang, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, “Direct Structural Determination of Individual DNA Molecules Using Electron Nanodiffraction”
  • Sandip Mazumder, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, “An Integrated Experimental-Computational Approach for Determining the Phonon Mean Free Path Spectrum in Semiconductors”
  • Psaras McGrier, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, “Synthesis and Design of Novel Graphyne and Graphdiyne-Based Metal-Organic Frameworks”
  • Stephen Niezgoda, Department of Materials Science and Engineering,”Uncertainty Quantification for Model Selection: Evaluating Material Constitutive Models based on Available Data”
  • Patrick Woodward, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, “Halide Double Perovskites: A New Class of Lead-free Compound Semiconductors”

CEM Seed Awards 2015

  • Maryam Ghazisaeidi, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, “First-principles study of dislocation core structures and properties in multi-principal-element alloys”
  • Jinwoo Hwang, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, “Direct Imaging of Atomic Scale Electromagnetic Fields in Functional Materials”
  • Hannah Shafaat, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, “Developing electrodes for hydrogen production based on robust biological catalysts”

CEM Seed Awards 2014

  • Anne Co, Department of Chemistry, “In-situ Solid-State NMR for Battery Studies”
  • Soheil Soghrati, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, “Advanced Finite Element Approach for the Virtual Design of Functionally Graded Al/Al2O3 Reinforced Composites”
  • R. Sooryakumar, Department of Physics, “Fabrication of Patterned Protein Molecules Using Living Magnetic Microbes”
  • Jessica Winter, Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Department of Biomolecular Engineering, “Novel Technologies for Constructing Hybrid 1D-2D Interfaces”

CEM Seed Awards 2012

  • Roberto Myers, Department of Materials Science & Engineering, “Thermal spintronics: materials for enhanced heat-spin interactions”
  • Michael Poirier, Department of Physics, “Functional dynamics of DNA scaffolded materials”
  • Josh Goldberger, Department of Chemistry, “Band structure engineering on Si/Ge/Sn graphene analogues”

CEM Seed Awards 2011

  • Roberto Myers, Department of Materials Science & Engineering, “Thermal Spintronics: Engineering Spin Currents and Dissipation”
  • Michael Paulaitis, Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, “Characterization & Synthesis of Mimetic Cell-Secreted Exosomes for Cell Signaling”
  • Michael Poirier, Department of Physics, “Magnetic  Resonance Studies of Chromatin Dynamics and Function”

CEM Seed Awards 2010

The area targeted for the 2010 Strategic Interest grants was PROTO-IRGs.

  • Roberto Myers, Department of Materials Science & Engineering, “Thermal Spintronics: Engineering Spin Currents and Dissipation”
  • Michael Poirier, Department of Physics, “Magnetic  Resonance Studies of Chromatin Structure and Dynamics”

CEM Seed Awards 2009

The area targeted for the 2009 Strategic Interest grants was HYBRID MATERIALS.

  • Roberto Myers, Department of Materials Science & Engineering, “Towards Room Temperature Spin-Injection/Detection in Wide Band Gap Semiconductors”
  • Jessica Winter, Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, and Co-PI R. Sooryakumar, Department of Physics, “Multifunctional Hybrid Nanomaterials: Synthesis and Manipulation”
  • Renewal of Yi Zhao, Department of Biomedical Engineering, “Microstructured Polymer Nanofibers for Skeletal Muscle Restoration”
  • Renewal of Michael Poirier, Department of Physics, “Heterogeneous Magnetic Particles for Force and Torque Sensing: A New Approach for Single Molecule Biology”

CEM Seed Awards 2008

The area targeted for the 2008 Strategic Interest grants was BIOMATERIALS.

  • Gunjan Agarwal, Department of Biomedical Engineering, “Magnetic Force Microscopy of Magnetic Nanoparticles in Biological Systems”
  • Michael Poirier, Department of Physics, “Heterogeneous Magnetic Particles for Force and Torque Sensing: A New Approach for Single Molecule Biology”
  • Yi Zhao, Department of Biomedical Engineering, “Microstructured Polymer Nanofibers for Skeletal Muscle Restoration”
  • Roberto Myers, Department of Materials Science & Engineering, “Rare-earth (Gd) Doped Wide Bandgap Semiconductors for Magnetoelectronics”