Accomplishments
Technical
- Development of new and improved photonic, electronic, and hybrid photonic/electronic technologies and products across a wide spectrum of telecommunications, computing, display/lighting, energy, transportation, medicine, and defense areas that are based upon new organic material platforms.
- Improved understanding of the relationships between the electrical properties, optical properties, and organizational structure of organic and hybrid organic-inorganic materials.
- Technological foundation for the next generation of computers and sensors employing all-optical technologies and ubiquitous, embedded systems.
- Substantial improvements in radar and navigation systems that will enhance our nation's defense capabilities, transform transportation, and facilitate space exploration.
- Progress toward the commercial realization of practical, inexpensive, and lightweight solar energy collectors.
- Manufacturing processes and materials that are safer, cheaper, and more environmentally benign than those employed in the silicon-based semiconductor industry and that provide exquisite 3-D control of material structure.
- Development of thermochemical nanolithography as a new nanoscale patterning technique.
Diversity
- Over the past ten years CMDITR has evolved to have a rather diverse faculty: for example in year 10, 28% of graduate students and 19% or postdoctorates and research faculty members were women. In addition, 10 the the 31 Center funded faculty members were women.
- Of the 2012 summer REU participants, 58% were female while 53% were minority students.
Education and Workplace
- A new generation of diverse scientists and engineers capable of leading future research and development efforts in IT and who are mindful of the importance of improving and sustaining education and diversity-enhancement efforts in future generations.
- Innovative, interdisciplinary, and flexible CMDITR graduate educational materials integrated into courses across many university departments as well as industry training programs. These materials include a complete Photonics Wiki, outreach demonstration kits and education videos.
- Significant increases in the U.S. workforce in the fields of information technology, materials science, and nanotechnology.
- CMDITR-conceived K-12 educational materials broadly used in science curricula.
- Recruitment of new faculty to the field who, together with their students, will give vitality and direction to related research activities for years to come.
- Six new interdisciplinary courses developed by CMDITR that incorporate the Center’s research findings.
- The CMDITR-developed “Responsible Conduct of Research” web-based ethics training modules are being used by more than 133 other educational institutions and organizations.
- More than 38 CMDITR graduate alumni are in the U.S. industrial workforce in the fields of information technology, materials science, and nanotechnology.
- A new, successful Ph.D. program well established in Materials Science and Engineering at Norfolk State University and approved by the State of Virginia. It is the second such program to be found at an HBCU.
- A long-lasting partnership between GEM and future STCs enabling (a) improved recruitment of minority students into S&E graduate programs with particular emphasis on doctoral programs in physical sciences; (b) a direct pathway for students to train in the context of multidisciplinary large-scale research.
- Eleven new junior faculty brought into the Center, of whom eight belong to underrepresented groups (women and underrepresented minorities).
- Six underrepresented CMDITR Ph.D. graduates are new university faculty members; five are women and one underrepresented minority.
Outputs
- 1741 scientific publications
- 1839 presentations
- 372 patents
- 15 start-up companies