IGERT: Global Traineeship in Sustainable Electronics

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This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) award establishes a new integrative model for graduate research and education to enable meaningful and measurable improvements in the global sustainability of electronic products. Through a partnership between Purdue University and Tuskegee University the Sustainable Electronics-IGERT will be carried out in close collaboration with the global electronics industry and academic partners. Intellectual Merit: The IGERT will focus on establishing the scientific foundation for a new model of consumption for electronics that avoids the traditional design-manufacture-use-dispose approach: faculty and student expertise from business, social sciences, and materials, product, and process engineering will come together to re-envision the electronics consumption paradigm, while maintaining a focus on simultaneously benefiting people, planet, and profit. Research themes addressed by this IGERT are 1) polymers from nature for fabricating electronics; 2) product design and manufacturing approaches with a reduced environmental footprint; and 3) system, supply chain, corporate and consumer behaviors, and the role of regulatory frameworks. Trainees will develop depth in their disciplines as well as breadth in the context of sustainable electronics, enabling them to become innovators and change leaders in society.Broader Impacts: This IGERT project will develop new cross-disciplinary graduate courses to form a core sustainable electronics curriculum, establish an interactive, international, team-based community to break-down barriers to solving problems that limit sustainability, and ensure that each trainee has an integrative international experience with industry or academic partners.IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to establish new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries, and to engage students in understanding the processes by which research is translated to innovations for societal benefit.