Center for Complex Materials wins $17.4 million grant

The Princeton Center for Complex Materials, which in the decade since its inception has established itself as one of the foremost centers for materials science research, was awarded a six-year, $17.4-million grant from the National Science Foundation last October.

PCCM, the fifth-largest center of its kind, was founded through an NSF grant in 1994 and has twice since successfully renewed the funding.

"Not only do we have fantastic faculty, but we also have fantastic students," said Ravindra Bhatt, director of PCCM. "That's one of the reasons why, though we are a small university, in terms of size, and young, in terms of materials science, we have one of the biggest materials research centers in the country."

The grant was awarded to subsidize three main interdisciplinary research groups and two smaller groups.

The first IRG, correlated electronics, works on materials with properties not found in conventional semiconductors and metals, such as high-temperature superconductivity. This group includes Nobel laureates Daniel Tsui, a professor in the electrical engineering department, and Philip Anderson, a professor emeritus of physics.

Another IRG, known as guided self-assembly, studies how to reduce imperfections in the spontaneous creation of patterns at the microand nanoscale. The third focuses on mechanical and electronic properties in nanostructures.

The two small groups study biological materials in muscle cells and oxide materials in the semiconductors.

The latest grant came after a multistage competition that culminated in a four-hour presentation and question-and-answer session before a panel of experts in Washington, D.C.

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A pool of about 100 pre-proposals submitted in September 2001 was eventually narrowed to 13 centers that ultimately received funding. Of the grants awarded, PCCM's was second in size only to that of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The funding program currently supports 29 centers with annual funding of $51 million.

Several more organizations are affected because some centers are affiliated with multiple insitutions. "It affects closer to 40 to 45 academic institutions and industrial partners," said Ulrich Strom, one of the directors of the MRSEC Program that oversees the grant.

Though two centers lost funding completely and others saw a drop in the size of their grant, PCCM's funding increased.

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"They historically have had a very strong program that grew out of two small groups, one in the area of electronic materials and physics and the other in polymers," Strom said.

PCCM involves 40 faculty from six departments — physics, chemistry, molecular biology, electrical engineering, chemical engineering, and mechanical and aerospace engineering.

"Princeton has always prided itself on having superb single investigators," Bhatt said. "Here, we not only have superb single faculty, but we also have faculty working toward a common goal. This is becoming much more important as interdisciplinary research is taking center stage."

In addition to sponsoring summer research programs for college students and economically disadvantaged high school students, PCCM scientists work with elementary and middle school teachers to demonstrate and explain science kits.

"[PCCM] had a very strong educational outreach program to undergraduates as well as K through 12 students," Strom said.