About the new NSF Science and Technology Center for Layered Polymeric Systems (CLiPS)
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced that it will establish a prestigious multimillion-dollar research center at Case Western Reserve University, effective August 1. The new NSF Science and Technology Center at Case, named the Center for Layered Polymeric Systems (CLiPS) at the Case School of Engineering, will be a powerful national presence for research at the crossroads of polymer science and engineering with the physical sciences (called "polymers plus"), and for education of a diverse American workforce that can meet the challenges of emerging multidisciplinary polymer-based technologies. This is the first-ever NSF Science and Technology Center awarded to the university.
CLiPS will receive approximately $19 million from NSF over the first five years. The lifetime of a center is usually 10 years with a total funding of around $40 million. Case and its partners will have the opportunity to reapply after four years to renew funding for CLiPS for a second five year period.The NSF Science and Technology Center for Layered Polymeric Systems, headquartered at Case Western Reserve University, will conduct research at the intersection between the physical sciences and polymer science and engineering. The research will center on a layering process created at Case that imparts features on the micro- and nanoscales. The forced-assembly process can combine otherwise incompatible polymers and other materials to produce hierarchical structures.
The center also involves partners at the University of Texas at Austin, Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn., the Cleveland Municipal School District, the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Miss., and the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., and affiliates at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Ind., the State University of New York at Fredonia, the Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, N.Y., and the Pennsylvania State University in Erie, Penn.
Anne Hiltner, the Herbert Henry Dow Professor of Science and Engineering in Case's department of macromolecular science and engineering, will serve as principal investigator and director of the center.