Links:

• NRL- Naval Research Labs
• AVS- American Vacuum Society
• APS- American Physical Society
• IEEE- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• ACS- American Chemistry Society
• NIST- National Institute of Standards and Technology
• MRS- Materials Research Society
• NSF-National Science Foundation

Overview

The IMS provides a focus for interdisciplinary research and education in materials science at GWU.  It brings together 10 tenured/tenure-track faculty in 2 schools and 5 departments to share equipment and foster externally supported collaboration.  It has grown from 3 senior faculty in 1989 to 13 faculty, and has current external funding at the level of about $1.5M per year.   Five of the 11 faculty are assistant professors (at GWU less than 5 years) and 2 are recent associate professors.   Six major instruments valued at over $1M (some purchased with NSF funds) are now maintained by the IMS.  In addition, the Institute has 4 visiting faculty, 11 full time postdocs performing research, and provides training to nearly 28 graduate and 8 undergraduate students who require the use of these instruments in their research (a total of 61 researchers).

 Primary mission

The IMS provides a focus for interdisciplinary research and education in materials science at GWU. At present the IMS faculty draws its members from five different departments in two different schools; namely the Departments of

• Chemistry  (David Ramaker, Michael Wagner, and Christopher Cahill),
• Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering  (Charles Gilmore),
• Electrical & Computer Engineering  (Martha Pardavi-Horvath),
• Physics  (Roger Peverley, Mark Reeves , Chen Zeng, and John Balbach),
• Earth and Environmental Sciences (John Hanchar and Henry Teng).

• John Balbach  Solid State NMR- protien structure
• Cahill   Synthesis of redox-active molecular sieves
• Gilmore   Simulation of thin film nucleation and growth
• Hanchar Environmental geochemistry
• Pardavi-Horvath  microwave magnetism, magnetic nanocomposites, nanostructured magnetic materials
• Peverley  Electron transport measurements on materials
• Ramaker Understanding many-body effects in electron spectroscopy.
• Reeves   Heat capacity measurements and microwave properties of materials
• Teng   The surface structure of minerals
• Wagner Synthesis of nanoparticles, magnetic refrigeration and advanced battery research.
• Zeng   Theoretical modeling of protein folding and mesoscopic materials  

• James Hickman Biotechnology
• Earl Skelton   Synthesis and characterization of metal oxides and sulfides