This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training [IGERT] award supports the establishment of a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, graduate training program of education and research in materials lifetime science and engineering. The participating institutions are the University of Tennessee and its team members: Lehigh University; Rutgers University; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Engineering Technology Center of Analysis & Technology, Inc.; Boeing Company; General Electric Company; Haynes International, Inc.; and the Institute of Nuclear Energy Research, Taiwan. The program is a joint effort of 30 scientists and engineers, with faculty participants drawn from nine Departments: Materials Science and Engineering; Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and Engineering Science; Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics; Chemistry; Civil and Environmental Engineering; Industrial Engineering; Biochemistry, Cellular, and Molecular Biology; Statistics; and Education. The program consists of four integrated components: [1] major research efforts with emphases on environmental/mechanical synergistic interactions; [2] a new Ph.D. curriculum; [3] industrial and national-laboratory internships, and a university student-exchange program; and [4] advanced, computer-based education/research technologies. The goal is to provide Ph.D. graduates who can assume leadership roles in the solutions of complex technological problems involving materials lifetime science and engineering. Solutions of these problems will result in accurate lifetime predictions and significant lifetime extensions of aging structural materials, and the development of new materials with improved lifetimes.
IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the multidisciplinary backgrounds and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing new, innovative models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. In the third year of the program, awards are being made to nineteen institutions for programs that collectively span all areas of science and engineering supported by NSF. The intellectual foci of this specific award reside in the Directorates for Engineering, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and Education and Human Resources.
