MRSEC: Center for the Science and Engineering of Materials

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Under renewed NSF support, The Center for the Science and Engineering of Materials (CSEM) at Caltech will carry forward its mission as a multifaceted materials research and education center. CSEM combines world-class materials research programs organized as interdisciplinary research groups and seed research projects, with educational programs serving underrepresented minority undergraduate, community college, and high school students across Southern California and also serving the general public via television-based mass media programming. The Center will address both research and educational aspects of materials science in several areas: i) Macromolecular materials design to produce tailored responses to cellular adhesion and growth; ii) novel ferroelectric photonic materials that enable new freedoms in tuning the dispersion relations for photonic materials and devices and offer a new avenue for scientific progress in using light to understand complex materials behavior; and iii) advanced structural materials based on bulk metallic glass composites, with the potential to enable new amorphous structural materials with strength-to-weight ratio much higher than steel. CSEM also supports emerging research areas via seed projects, which will focus on i) catalytic materials for chemical storage of hydrogen via methanol production and use in nonpolymer fuel cells based on "superprotonic" solid acids and ii) spintronic and optoelectronic properties of organic semiconductor/ferromagnetic heterostructures with applications in future electronic and quantum computing devices.