hide random home http://www.mrl.uiuc.edu/~www/mrl/intro.html (PC Press Internet CD, 03/1996)



The Laboratory houses research laboratories and central facilities for 3 major programs: It supports interdisciplinary materials research for faculty and students in departments throughout the University. The Director of the Materials Research Laboratory (which has the administrative status of a Department in the College of Engineering), is Howard Birnbaum.

The NSF/MRL Program at the University of Illinois has been in operation since 1972 and presently supports 45 faculty, 15 postdocs and 50 graduate students from seven academic departments; Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, Nuclear Engineering and Physics. These researchers share MRL facilities with those in other Programs.

The purpose of the NSF/MRL funding has been:
1) to support major research programs where sustained, cooperative effort by several investigators where diverse backgrounds is needed to make satisfactory progress in an important area of materials research,
2) to develop and operate central facilities which provide researchers with state-of-the-art instrumentation, and
3) to provide seed funding for new initiatives, new investigators, and novel concepts and ideas in materials research.

The DOE program is supported by the Department of Energy, Division of Materials Sciences as a part of their National Laboratory program. This program was begun in 1962 under the Atomic Energy Commission and has continued under the various reincarnations of that agency. There are three programs under the MRL / DOE program -- a Metals and Ceramics effort, a Solid State Sciences program, and a Materials Chemistry program. Within these efforts, the DOE supports the research of about 45 faculty members whose academic homes are in seven departments of the Engineering College and the School of Chemistry. About 200 graduate students and Research Associates are supported by these efforts. The DOE program supports the research of individual faculty and of groups of faculty. Areas of research include Structural Ceramics, Liquid-Solid Interfaces, Surface Science, Organic and Polymeric Systems, Scattering Science, Mechanical Properties and Environmental Effects, Nanophase Materials, Semiconductor Materials, Thin Films and Multilayers, Theory and Simulation of Materials Behavior, Synthesis of Novel Materials, Superconductivity, Catalysis and many other of the subjects of critical importance to the development of science and engineering.

The NSF / STCS program in High Temperature Superconductivity is one of the early Science and Technology programs developed by the NSF and was begun in 1987. It is a multi-institutional Center which is jointly operated between the University of Illinois, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and Argonne National Laboratory. The STCS headquarters is in the MRL at the University of Illinois. The missions of this laboratory are to carry out forefront research in the subjects of high temperature superconductivity, to develop imaginative applications of high temperature superconducting materials, to transfer the technology of high Tc materials to industry, and to develop outreach educational programs.


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