Faculty and students from departments across the engineering school gathered Friday, March 22 at the first annual Multifunctional Materials Integration (MMI) retreat. The nearly 40 participants are part of a cross-disciplinary initiative that embraces grand challenges in engineering and technology which cannot easily be solved by a small team or with experts in only one field. The purpose of the retreat was to share ideas, build new collaborative teams, and identify goals for the following year.The retreat included updates about the Nanoscale Materials Characterization Facility (NMCF) and the University of Virginia Microfabrication Lab (UVML), learning about how to collaborate with the CRISP/MIST centers, as well as a student poster session. The highlight, however, was exploring those grand challenges. The group is exploring projects such as integrating photonics on a chip.
“We were able to get discussion about the next goals started,” explained MMI Director and Materials Science and Engineering Professor Petra Reinke, who was pleased with the attendance and the excitement of the group. “We're already planning the next retreat in the summer to develop the ideas further.”
UVML Director and Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Art Lichtenberger found the retreat valuable as well. “[It] reinforced our sense of being part of an MMI community and fostered conversation on our longer term, big picture/impact research goals.”
Thinking toward the future of MMI, Lichtenberger explained, “Being an experimentalist, I am particularly excited by the striking technical capabilities the MMI is realizing through the $10M Strategic Investment Fund grant. Powerful equipment with new capabilities not only allows us to perform experiments we have been previously wanting to realize, but also energizes and enables us to think in new ways.”
The MMI Initiative is one of a number of cross-disciplinary initiatives inspired by Dean Craig Benson when he arrived at UVA several years ago. He observed that the Engineering School had many high-quality pockets of strength but lacked the size and distinctiveness to achieve world-wide recognition in a highly competitive landscape. Benson charged the faculty with finding ways to bridge these pockets and build a critical mass of scholars across SEAS that would enable world-class research in areas of opportunity. MMI grew out of these early discussions. Professor John Lach, UVA Engineering Director of Cross-Cutting Initiatives, explained the progress already being made by the presence of MMI. “Thanks to faculty from multiple departments working together to intellectually and operationally drive the initiative, the investment of faculty lines and research development support from the Engineering School, and the university's investment in equipment and facilities, MMI is moving forward and positioning the school to become world-class leaders in this important area of research.”
Lach continued by describing that initiatives like MMI are stitching pieces together from across the university. “The retreat was another important step to building an interdisciplinary community and identifying future opportunities that our faculty can go after collaboratively.”