• Renewable Energy Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Colorado School of Mines. This new Center focuses on transformative materials research and educational directions that would significantly impact emerging renewable energy technologies. The research aims to harness unique properties of nanostructured materials to significantly enhance the performance of photovoltaic and studies ion-conducting composite membrane materials for renewable energy applications such as fuel cells.

• Constraints and Frustration in Nano-Structured and Bio-Molecular Materials, Brandeis University. This new MRSEC supports innovative research and education in the relationship between nanomaterials science and biology. The research aims to understand how constraints similar to those found in living cells can lead to new emergent properties, and how to exploit these properties for developing novel nano-structured biomaterials, and biomimetic materials such as active matter capable of moving on their own power, like living matter. The MRSEC provides a multidisciplinary education to students that will contribute to developing a diverse workforce to meet the needs of biomaterials industries. The Center provides novel facilities for research in the developing area of microfluidics and is collaborating with industry to develop microfluidics technologies.

• The Georgia Tech Laboratory for New Electronic Materials, Georgia Institute of Technology. This new Center addresses the need for new electronic materials and associated processes for applications in microelectronics, optics and sensors. The single Interdisciplinary Research Group on Graphene Science and Technology investigates fabrication and characterization approaches for the implementation of epitaxial graphene as an electronic material.

• Center for Emergent Materials, Ohio State University. This new Center performs integrated research on emergent materials and phenomena creating new paradigms in computing and information storage. The research activities focus on a new understanding of electron-spin injection and transport, and the synthesis and exploitation of multifunctional properties of innovative double perovskite heterostructures. An important component of the education program is an interactive, constructionist approach to address the nature and cognitive cause of the misconception of materials science concepts.

• NYU MRSEC for Semantophoretic Assemblies, New York University. The MRSEC at NYU is a new Center focusing on fabrication of innovative materials—from the colloidal to macroscopic scale—based on colloidal or microscopic particles equipped with self-contained information that directs assembly, either through shape or chemical interactions. Potential applications include among others ceramic composite dental and medical materials as well as photonic materials.

In addition, nine awards will support established centers which have successfully recompeted, in most cases with a significantly different focus of materials research and education.

• Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Harvard University. The MRSEC at Harvard offers a broad range of research activities from soft materials and glasses to biological materials. The research focuses on micromechanics, droplet templated materials and active soft materials with applications ranging from drug delivery to soft-robotics.

• MIT Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The MRSEC at MIT supports a broad-based interdisciplinary materials research program. The Center designs, fabricates, characterizes, and models nanomaterials for electrochemical energy storage and conversion, multi-component polymeric materials with mechanical properties that can be changed on-demand, and composite, multi-functional nano-structured optical fibers. In addition, functionalized polymer multilayers that interact with living cells and materials based on a two-dimensional triangular and kagomé lattice are studied.

• Center for Nanoscale Science, Pennsylvania State University. This broad MRSEC exploits unique capabilities in materials synthesis and fabrication, microscopy, physical property measurements, molecular synthesis and theory to attain materials with new properties and functions. The Center explores biological and synthetic molecular motors, new phenomena in superconductivity, magnetism, and motion of electron spins due to confinement of electrons, the integration of metals and semiconductors in sophisticated patterns to control the propagation of light, and multiferroics that may enable new paradigms in computation and data storage.

• Princeton Center for Complex Materials, Princeton University. The MRSEC at Princeton employs an integrated team approach in which experiment, theory, and simulation combine to study several materials systems: electronic materials with triangular lattice and Dirac excitations; molecular interfaces formed by non-traditional fabrication methods; self-assembling nanoscale building blocks and their integration into defined structures; and new materials with functionality derived from control of quantum degrees of freedom.

• The Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at the University of Chicago. The MRSEC at the University of Chicago supports innovative research to produce the design principles for the next generation of materials by focusing on investigating materials formed far from equilibrium. The broad based research program ranges from nanomaterials and quantum computing to macroscopic behavior of elastic sheets and granular media.

• Soft Materials Research Center, University of Colorado at Boulder. The Soft Materials Research Center is one of the principal centers of liquid crystal study and expertise in the world, with research spanning the range from cutting-edge, basic liquid crystal and soft materials science to the development of enhanced capabilities for photonic, chemical, and biotech applications of soft materials.

• Materials Research Science and Engineering Center on Polymers, U Mass Amherst. The MRSEC at UMass investigates fundamental challenges in polymer synthesis, physics, and engineering. This Center explores hierarchically ordered polymer systems based on nanoscopic elements and nano-confinement, seeks to control polymer surface morphology using elastic instabilities, probe fundamental polymer properties in ionic liquids, and studies amphiphilic polyelectrolytes. These research efforts will be significantly enhanced by the Center's involvement in the Global Research Laboratory at Seoul National University, the Advanced Institute for Materials Research at Tohoku University, and collaborative efforts between the Center and national laboratories. The MRSEC established strong ties with undergraduate educational programs at Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, the University of California at Riverside, the University of Vermont, and Howard University.

• University of Minnesota Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. This multifaceted MRSEC enables important areas of future technology, ranging from biomedicine, separations, and plastic electronics to security, renewable energy, and information technology. The UMN MRSEC manages an extensive program in education and career development. Center research activities are integrated with educational programs, providing interdisciplinary training of students and postdocs. The MRSEC is bolstered by a broad complement of over 35 companies that contribute directly to IRG research through intellectual, technological, and financial support.

• Materials Research Science and Engineering Center: Quantum and Spin Phenomena in Nanomagnetic Structures (QSPINS), University of Nebraska - Lincoln. The Nebraska MRSEC’s research focuses on new magnetic materials and structures at the nanometer scale, with the aim of developing fundamental understanding of their properties and related phenomena important for advanced computation and data storage. QSPINS fosters interactions with industrial companies to leverage the expected scientific innovations for potential technological advances.