This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) award will support the establishment of a multidisciplinary graduate training program in research and development of specialized sensors and integrated devices. This activity is a joint effort of nineteen faculty from six departments in the College of Engineering, the College of Science, and the College of Medicine at Wayne State University, and of three scientists from Ford Motor Company Research Laboratories and the General Motors Research and Development Laboratory. The expertise of this group of scientists and engineers provides the intellectual underpinning for the training of seventy-two graduate students over the five-year duration of the award. Operating in a team research setting, IGERT students will focus on the development of `smart` sensors for applications in the strategically important areas of automotive systems, aircraft and spacecraft systems, enabling technology systems, biomedical systems, and energy systems. Active research programs in developing wide-bandgap semiconductors, organic film devices, graded pyroelectrics, thin film magnetic devices, and integration technology will be incorporated into a new comprehensive multidisciplinary graduate curriculum for IGERT students that will include a series of `hands-on` lecture and laboratory courses and seminars developed by participating academic and industrial scientists and engineers. IGERT is a new, NSF-wide program intended to facilitate the establishment of innovative, research-based graduate programs that will train a diverse group of scientists and engineers to be well-prepared to take advantage of a broad spectrum of career options. IGERT provides doctoral institutions with an opportunity to develop new, well-focussed multidisciplinary graduate programs that transcend organizational boundaries and unite faculty from several departments or institutions to establish a highly interactive, collaborative environment for both training and research. In this first year of the program, support will be provided to seventeen institutions for new or nascent programs that collectively span all areas of science and engineering supported by NSF.
