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OSU Materials Research Seed Grant Program – 2023 Award Announcement

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We are pleased to announce that after a thorough internal and external review process, 4 Exploratory Materials Research Grants (EMRGs), 2 Multidisciplinary Team Building Grants (MTBGs), and 2 Proto-IRG Grants have been selected to fund exceptionally promising, innovative materials research on campus.

The OSU Materials Research Seed Grant Program (MRSGP) provides internal research funding opportunities designed to achieve the greatest impact for seeding and advancing excellence in materials research of varying scopes. It is jointly funded and managed by the Center for Emergent Materials (CEM), an NSF MRSEC [NSF DMR-2011876], the Center for Exploration of Novel Complex Materials (ENCOMM), and the Institute for Materials and Manufacturing Research (IMR). Congratulations to this year’s awardees!

EMRGs – ($50,000 each) enable nascent and innovative materials research to emerge to the point of being competitive for external funding:

  1. “Site-Controlled InGaN/GaN Quantum Dots in GaN Nanowires for Single Photo Emission”
    PI: Shamsul Arafin; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
  2. “Epitaxial Strain Control of Ferroelectricity for Advanced Microelectronics”
    PI: Kaveh Ahadi; Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Electric and Computer Engineering
  3. “Polar Instabilities in Locally Polar Superconductors”
    PI: Salva Salmani-Rezaie; Department of Materials Science and Engineering
  4. “Design & Synthesis of Functional Covalent Organic Frameworks for the Photocatalytic Reduction of Carbon Dioxide to Chemical Fuels & Feedstocks”
    PI: Psaras McGrier; Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

MTBGSs – ($70,000 each) forming multidisciplinary materials research teams that can compete effectively for federal block-funding opportunities, such as the NSF MRSEC program:

  1. “Polymer-Based Enzymatic Nanomaterials”
    PI: David Wood; Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
    Co-PI: Davita Watkins; Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry“Signal Transducing Nanodevice Assemblies for Triggered Materials Self-assembly”
    PI: Carlos Castro; Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

 Proto-IRGs – ($100,000 each) forming multidisciplinary materials research teams that can compete effectively for federal block-funding opportunities, such as the NSF MRSEC program:

  1. Topological States Beyond Crystaline Materials”
    PI: Jinwoo Hwang; Department of Material Science and Engineering
    Co-PI; Yuan-Ming; Department of Physics
    Co-PI; Jyoti Katoch; Department of Physics
  2. “In situ Control of Band Gaps & Intersubband Transition of 2D Semiconductors”
    PI: Jeanie Lau; Department of Physics
    Co-PI; Roberto Myers; Department of Material Sciences and Engineering
    Co-PI; Wolfgang Windl; Department of Material Sciences and Engineering

 On behalf of the integrated materials research community at Ohio State,

Sincerely,

Fengyuan Yang                         P. Chris Hammel                       Steven A. Ringel

Director, ENCOMM                    Director, CEM                           Executive Director, IMR

Conference Across MRSEC-PREM Schools (CAMPS) a Big Success

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The Conference Across MRSEC-PREM Schools, CAMPS, was a student-led initiative sponsored by University of California – Santa Barbara (UCSB) and The Ohio State University (OSU) MRSECs with the aim of taking advantage of the wide MRSEC-PREM network to benefit all participating institutes’ students and faculty. The conference was held at OSU on October 13 and 14, 2022. Given the collaborative spirit that MRSEC instills in us, we found that it is imperative to expand upon this spirit to become cross-institutional and benefit from each other’s knowledge, network, and industry connections.

A team of three graduate students, one from OSU and two from UCSB, organized and emceed the workshop. The students structured the workshop to focus one day on careers in academia and a second day on careers in industry and invited 8 scientists to share their research, soft skills, and work experience with the students. Participants actively and enthusiastically engaged in networking opportunities with their peers and with the speakers as well as presented posters during the workshop. As one participant says, “I enjoyed having more networking time with the industry professionals, university faculty, and other participants. Being an undergraduate it was an amazing opportunity to speak with Master and Ph.D. students from other universities which I do not get to do often if at all.”

The CAMPS workshop welcomed 50 students from 27 institutions, 10 of which were MRSEC sites and 9 were PREM sites. One of the participants nicely summarized the diversity of the workshop, “I am also happy that participants of this conference is a very diverse group. The group of participants is diverse and inclusive in terms of degree (PhDs, graduate students, and undergraduate students), ethnicity, and gender. It is impressive (and not easy) for an event to be organized to such diversity and inclusiveness.” Given the overwhelming success of this National Science Foundation, NSF, funded workshop, there is discussion for strategies to embed this workshop as part of the MRSEC and PREM programs for future students.

Faculty Research Initiative Video Series: Nandini Trivedi

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How is a collection of electrons like a society? Nandini Trivedi, professor of physics in the CEM, says in both cases, individuals act differently in a group than they do alone. She studies these interactions in electrons, with an eye to their beneficial practical applications, such as the dissipationless transmission of electricity through superconductivity.

Watch her video here.

Randeria Elected 2022 AAAS Fellow

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Congratulations to Prof. Mohit Randeria, IRG-1, on being elected a AAAS 2022 Fellow! In October 2022, the AAAS Council elected 505 members as Fellows of AAAS. Election as a Fellow honors members whose efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications in service to society have distinguished them among their peers and colleagues.

See the announcement here.

2022 OSU Materials Research Seed Grant Program Request for Proposals

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We are pleased to announce the 2022-2023 Materials Research Seed Grant Program Request for Proposals (RFP). This enhanced seed program leverages resources and best practices of the Center for Emergent Materials (CEM), an NSF MRSEC; the Center for Exploration of Novel Complex Materials (ENCOMM); and the Institute for Materials Research (IMR).

The three funding tiers of the OSU Materials Research Seed Grant Program offered are:

Proto-IRG Grants
Proto-IRG Grants provide funds up to $100,000/year per award in direct costs, require one Principal Investigator (PI) and two Co-Principal Investigators (Co-PIs), and may have unfunded collaborators with the goal of forming new Interdisciplinary Research Groups (IRGs) within the CEM, a National Science Foundation (NSF) supported Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC).  These proposals should fall within the program scope of the Division of Materials Research at the NSF.  We invite proposers to communicate with CEM representatives (https://cem.osu.edu/) to identify competitive topics.

Multidisciplinary Team Building Grants
MTBGs provide funds up to $70,000/year per award in direct costs, and require one PI and one Co-PI, and may have unfunded collaborators, with the goal of forming multidisciplinary materials research teams that can compete effectively for federal block-funding opportunities, such as the NSF MRSEC program.

Exploratory Materials Research Grants
EMRGs provide funds up to $50,000/year per award in direct costs, and require one PI, and may have Co-PIs and/or unfunded collaborators, with the goal of enabling nascent and innovative materials research to emerge to the point of being competitive for external funding.  EMRGs, while open to all faculty, emphasizes support of pre-tenure faculty members.

Key Dates:

  • Request for Proposals Issued: Monday, October 24, 2022
  • MRSGP Virtual Open House: Wednesday, November 16, 2022 at 4:00 PM ET
  • Letters of Intent Due: Monday, January 9, 2023 at 5:00 PM ET
  • Notice of MRSGP Appropriateness: Monday, January 16, 2023
  • Proto-IRG and Multidisciplinary Team Building Grants tiers only – Mandatory Team Proposal Presentations: Wednesday, January 25, February 1, and February 8, 2023
    • 4:00-5:00 PM, Physics Research Building, Room 4138
  • Proposals Due (All Funding Tiers): Monday, March 6, 2023 at 5:00 PM ET
  • Awards Announced (anticipated): Friday, August 26, 2023
  • Funded Projects Start Date (anticipated): Friday, September 1, 2023 (12-month project period)

Have a question? Please contact IMR Proposal Development Specialist Joanna Gardner, at gardner.306@osu.edu , or visit our MRSGP webpage.