The enhancement of research and educational programs at Jackson State University (JSU) by supporting the multi-disciplinary Nanotoxicity CREST Center is proposed. The Center will consist of faculty members from the JSU Departments of Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Civil and Environmental Engineering. The interdisciplinary group of researchers will perform comprehensive investigations of nanomaterials that will strengthen the research infrastructure of Jackson State University. The proposed projects include different aspects of the development and production of nanomaterials and investigations of their toxicity. There are five proposed research subprojects: ?Silver Clusters: A Theoretical Study of Structure, Spectra, Paramagnetism, and Chemisorption?; ?Environment-Specific Issues in Nanoparticle Physics: Optical, Energy Transfer and Relaxation Processes?; ?Nanomaterial Based Sensing of Environmental Toxin Using hyper ? Rayleigh Scattering Spectroscopy?, ?Nanomaterials: a Study of Toxicity Mechanism, Bioaccumulation Potential, and Application for Prediction Modeling?, and ?Modeling and prediction of Physical Properties and Toxicity of Nanomaterials?. There are strong links among all subprojects of the proposed Center. One of the unique features is the two-way interaction between computational and experimental groups. The theoretical group will model nano-species studied by experimentalists. Based on the data from computational calculations, experimentalists will be able to test new materials that are predicted by theory to possess an enhanced property of interest.
New courses and laboratories will be developed and executed by members of the Center in order to establish a graduate program in Materials Science. The Center's activities will be focused on training minority underrepresented graduate and undergraduate students and on lectures, workshops, seminar series, and research summer programs for undergraduate students from colleges surrounding Jackson and from HBCU/MI institutions. The collaborative activities of the members of the Center will also include the organization of two series of annual international conferences: ?Current Trends in Computational Chemistry? and ?Southern Schools on Computational Chemistry and Materials Science?. In addition to expanding the nation?s base for science and technology, the Center will also increase the number of Ph.D. degrees in computational chemistry awarded to African-Americans and will provide well qualified and diverse faculty members for US universities and colleges.
