Materials science is the study and design of new materials and their properties, and it plays a crucial role in industries ranging from renewable energy and aerospace to electronics and national defense. Researchers at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Hawaiʻi Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) are leading new initiatives to advance materials science across the state.
Materials Science Consortium for Research and Education
UH Mānoa launched the Materials Science Consortium for Research and Education (MSCoRE) in 2017, with a goal of bringing together materials experts and infrastructure scattered around several colleges and departments under one group in support of education, innovation and to lay the foundation for a future materials science center at UH Mānoa.
Under MSCoRE, UH Mānoa developed a popular research experience class for undergraduates and became successful in obtaining grants to bolster its materials science program. One of its early successes was earning a U.S. Department of Energy grant to study hydrogen storage materials.
Materials Research and Education Consortium
Utilizing this momentum, researchers from UH Mānoa and the University of Washington (UW) received a seed award from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Partnerships for Research and Education in Materials (PREM) program in 2021. The collaboration, known as the Materials Research and Education Consortium (MRE-C), is made up of seven UH Mānoa faculty from HIGP, Hawaiʻi Natural Energy Institute, College of Engineering and College of Social Sciences, as well as faculty from the UW Molecular Engineering Materials Center.
MRE-C conducts public school visits around the islands to increase student interest and participation in materials science and STEM, and facilitates student exchanges at the undergraduate and graduate levels between UH Mānoa and UW. The grant was recently renewed by NSF for a full six years at $4.2 million.
Hawaiʻi Institute of Materials Research
As a testament to UH Mānoa’s expanding capacity and expertise in this space, the Office of Naval Research just awarded a three-year, $4.5 million grant to conduct innovative, high-risk scientific research with the potential to enhance naval capabilities and national security in the Indo-Pacific region. Together with the NSF PREM grant, UH Mānoa will now have a formal structure in place with the establishment of the Hawaiʻi Institute of Materials Research (HIMaR). HIMaR will be a virtual, interdisciplinary institute of applied and fundamental research in materials science, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and advanced manufacturing.
Read more on materials science research at UH in this Noelo story. Noelo is UH’s research magazine from the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation.
