Materials Week conference highlights breadth, depth of Ohio State expertise in vital field

Posted: 

by Sarah Logar, Materials Science & Engineering

Ohio State Materials Science and Engineering professors maintained a strong presence at the 2013 Institute for Materials Research (IMR) Materials Week, held May 7-10 at TechColumbus and the Ohio Union. MSE Professors David McComb, Wolfgang Windl, Mike Mills, Hamish Fraser, John Lannutti, Roberto Myers, and Siddharth Rajan discussed their respective research areas at the 4-day event, which was attended by researchers from Ohio State and other institutions. 

“Materials Week is the one week of the year where people find out the full breadth of what is going on at OSU with interdisciplinary materials research,” Dr. Windl said. “It is clear from this event that departments and colleges have grown much closer, and an unprecedented amount of collaboration is going on.”

Breakout sessions that occurred throughout the week included Frontiers in Materials Microscopy, Nano-Engineering of Hybrid Materials, Next Generation Electronics, Optoelectronics and Spintronics, ICME – Integrated Computational Materials Engineering, Materials Design and Catalysis, Nanofluidic and Nanopore Engineering Systems, New Physics and Device Applications in 2D Materials, and Spin-Lattice Interactions. Dr. Stephen J. Pennycook of Oak Ridge National Laboratory delivered the keynote address titled "Atoms Under the Microscope."

Dr. McComb, director of the new Center for Electron Microscopy and Analysis (CEMAS) on West Campus, introduced the center and detailed the extremely high concentration of electron microsopes—including two Titans—that are housed under its roof. At the end of the opening day, IMR hosted a reception at CEMAS for all the invited guests and speakers.

“It was a great event, excellent plenary lecture by Steve Pennycook, and wonderful reception at CEMAS,” Dr. McComb said.

In addition to the four days of lectures and evening receptions, students and postdoctoral researchers participated in a poster session Thursday night to show off their materials research interests. IMR announced poster awards at Friday's closing ceremony.

Materials Week is an annual conference hosted by IMR that showcases materials-allied research at The Ohio State University and beyond. This annual event, which began in 2008, brings together hundreds of researchers from OSU, other universities, industry, and government labs at technical talks, poster sessions, and evening receptions covering the full spectrum of materials-allied research.