The Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, has launched its Institute for Materials (IMat), the newest of Georgia Tech’s nine Interdisciplinary Research Institutes. It results from an investment of nearly $10 million that Georgia Tech has committed through 2018 to establish an interdisciplinary materials innovation ecosystem. IMat will play a leadership role in accelerating materials discovery, development, and application.
Georgia Tech is one of the nation’s largest materials research universities. More than 200 faculty members are addressing major technologies in fields such as graphene, polymers, and photonics. IMat will support and connect research programs across Georgia Tech’s traditional academic disciplines/units, while fostering a network of industry, government and academic research laboratories across the nation. One major component of IMat focuses on strengthening the connection between the core research strengths in many aspects of materials research at Georgia Tech. This includes development of exploratory Web-based collaboration tools for materials.
“Whether we’re talking about high-efficiency, high-temperature jet engines, solar cells that generate electricity as inexpensively as coal, wind turbines that use magnets free of rare-earth elements, or the biocompatibility of replacement joints and implants, materials matter,” said Cyrus Wadia, assistant director for Clean Energy and Materials R&D in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “The Materials Genome Initiative is catalyzing important collaborative advances from industry, academia and the federal government, so that together we can secure the nation’s future as a leader in this critical technological domain.”
The Materials Genome Initiative is a public-private endeavor that aims to cut in half the time it takes to develop novel materials that can fuel advanced manufacturing and bolster the 21st century American economy.
