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Science Alliance Annual Report

2008–2009

UT-ORNL Joint Institutes

Joint Institute for Advanced Materials

The Joint Institute for Advanced Materials fosters interdisciplinary research and educational opportunities related to developing new materials with superior properties (such as the greater toughness and high-temperature strength required for airplane skins) or those that can be tailored to support new technologies (such as pocket-sized supercomputers or medical implants that alter their shape in response to temperature).

In FY09, JIAM support brought three new graduate fellows to UTK, bringing the total to nine—five in physics, two in materials science and engineering and two in civil and environmental engineering. The fellowships add $10,000 to student stipends, bringing them up to the more competitive $28,000 to $35,000 range. The joint institute also contributed matching funds to three successful research proposals, among them a Department of Defense EPSCoR project led by Veerle Keppens, UTK materials science and engineering, and the NSF IGERT, Sustainable Technology through Advanced Interdisciplinary Research project (STAIR) led by David Keffer, UTK chemical and bimolecular engineering.

Pengcheng Dai, UTK physics and astronomy, was awarded a JIAM Chair-of-Excellence appointment, joining Hanno Weitering, UTK physics and astronomy, and Dayakar Penumadu, UTK civil and environmental engineering. Dai’s work on a new class of high-temperature superconducting materials recently received significant scientific acclaim.

JIAM began operation in FY07, following a five-year incubation period as the state-funded Tennessee Advanced Materials Laboratory (TAML) center of excellence. Both JIAM and TAML were directed by former Distinguished Scientist Ward Plummer, who resigned his UTK appointment at the end of 2008. Deputy director George Pharr, UTK materials science and engineering, assumed this leadership role in February, 2009. Pharr will guide the design of a planned $30 million facility to be built at UT’s Cherokee Farm campus and has plans for a “seed money” program to attract outside grants to the joint institute.