With National Science Foundation support, CUNY City College, will establish the Center for Interface Design and Engineered Assembly of Low-dimensional Systems (IDEALS). The Center will address the national need for accelerating the pace of discovery and deployment of advanced materials to address critical needs and grand challenges, such as clean energy, national security, and human welfare. The goal of the Center is to design and discover materials with new and enhanced functionalities to further technology, energy and health applications.
Twenty two researchers from Chemistry, Physics, and Chemical, Biomedical and Electrical Engineering departments from partner institutions will employ experimental, analytical and numerical modelling tools to design and discover complex novel materials with new and enhanced functionalities, and integrate education and research to enhance both enterprises within the Center. Along with the research goals, the Center will enhance the educational experience of students, and use proven and innovative approaches to recruit and retain students from underrepresented groups in order to produce a diverse workforce of materials science and engineering leaders trained for careers in academia or industry, including high-tech manufacturing jobs.
Center research efforts are organized into three interdisciplinary and cross-pollinating subprojects: (1) Low-Dimensional Functional Materials and Nano-Heterostructures (2) Bio-inspired Re-Configurable Materials; and (3) Novel Materials Probes and Design Formalism. Synergy among the three subprojects stems from their thematic overlap and complementarity. Similarities in approaches of material synthesis, characterization and theoretical/computational methods also serve to ensure that links will be forged, leading to new discoveries.
Two frontier materials systems will be investigated in the Center: crystalline layered materials and engineered superlattices and aggregated bio-molecular or hybrid materials. A suite of sophisticated tools and theoretical approaches will be developed and deployed to investigate the materials and explore their functionality and potential applications in areas as diverse as energy generation, sensing, quantum computing, and medical diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
