This award makes it possible for the University of Alabama birmingham to renovate their Chemistry Department in order to improve their research space and to involve more graduate and undergraduate students in their research. This university had initiated cross-disciplinary research in a number of areas, single crystal protein growth and designer drug research is one example. However, they are also linking materials science and engineering, biomedical engineering, physics, chemistry, mathematics and computer and information science in research areas which focus on polymer synthesis and evaluation, molecular biophysics and computational chemistry. Many of their research efforts are getting direct support from industrial participants and this is allowing them to make their most valuable products, their students, keep in tune with the needs of the industrial sector. This renovation project encourages progress in one of the Nation's strategic research areas, materials science.
