The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded more than $5 million to support two collaborative research programs that involve UC Santa Barbara and focus on increasing participation in materials science research, training, and careers. The funding was part of the NSF’s $50-million investment in its Partnerships for Research and Education in Materials (PREM) program. For nearly twenty years, PREM has broadened access to materials science-focused skills and opportunities by supporting strategic partnerships between minority-serving institutions and NSF-funded research centers and facilities at research-intensive institutions.

"Supporting the scientific talent present in every community in our country is imperative to strengthening the nation's materials research infrastructure, which is central to everything from semiconductors to medical implants," said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. "NSF is dedicated to empowering everyone who wants to shape our scientific future for the benefit of their communities and the U.S. research community at large."

The NSF’s investment includes recommitting more than $4 million over six years to eleven existing PREM programs and awarding $1 million in seed funding to launch four new partnerships. In addition to fundamental research projects, the new PREM awards will also support specialized training and mentorship for students and early-career researchers, new research faculty positions, expanded educational outreach to local high school students and teachers, and other activities to build pathways for the future materials-research workforce. 

The collaboration between UCSB’s Materials Research Laboratory (MRL), an NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC), and Jackson State University (JSU) in Mississippi received $4.2 million from the NSF. Since 2006, the Partnership for Research and Education in Materials Science has provided ten-week summer research internships for JSU students at UCSB, allowing them to collaborate with faculty and work in the university’s world-class facilities, including the MRL, widely recognized as one of the top five materials research facilities in the world. By receiving a fourth consecutive cycle of funding, the program will continue to provide historically underrepresented participants from JSU, an HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), community colleges, and K-12 schools the opportunity to become next-generation materials scientists through innovative research and education. JSU is the only urban university in Mississippi, where African Americans make up 98 percent of the minority population and 37 percent of the total population.

“It’s been a great experience to do research, especially in such a beautiful city as Santa Barbara. I have personally gained a lot of confidence just working here,” said KC Sims, a Jackson State student, who worked on liposomes in UCSB materials professor Cyrus Safinya’s lab last summer as part of the PREM program. “As a scientist, we hear a lot about innovation, but I don’t typically see it. But I feel like working in the high-tech lab at UCSB has really helped me see the innovation in person, and that goes a long way.”

One of the new partnerships invested in by the NSF involves UCSB’s NSF Quantum Foundry. UCSB stepped to the front of the quantum research race in 2019 when the federal agency awarded the university a six-year, $25-million grant to establish the nation’s first Quantum Foundry to develop materials and devices for quantum information-based technologies. New Mexico State University (NMSU) has partnered with the Quantum Foundry to launch the Partnership for Research and Education on Quantum Materials and Processes (PREQ). NMSU is one of the largest minority-serving institutions in the U.S., with more than sixty percent of its students identifying as Hispanic or Native American. The PREQ aims to broaden participation of underrepresented minority students in materials research and education through targeted high school and community college recruiting and outreach. The partnership will give PREM students an opportunity to work on next-generation quantum materials and devices. 

“It will be great to partner with NMSU and share expertise and students with them, enabling us to broaden our own research impact and to impact a broader network of minority serving institutions,” said Stephen Wilson, a UCSB professor of materials and co-director of the Quantum Foundry. “Quantum science in particular has suffered from a lack of participation from researchers from minority communities, and the PREM program helps to narrow that divide.”

UCSB researchers are also involved with a third active PREM, which partners New Mexico Highlands University (NMHU) and the NSF-supported BioPolymers, Automated Cellular Infrastructure, Flow, and Integrated Chemistry Materials Innovation Platform (BioPACIFIC MIP). Faculty from various departments at UCSB and UC Los Angeles received a five-year, $23.7-million grant from NSF in 2020 to operate the one-of-a-kind user facility dedicated to revolutionizing high-performance polymers. The PREM focuses on the recruitment, the retention, and the degree attainment of participants from NMHU, a small liberal arts university with a student body composed of 54 percent Hispanic Americans and 66 percent women. In addition to giving PREM students hands-on training and summer research opportunities at UCSB and UCLA, the partnership also led to the design and launch of two new materials science courses at NMHU.

“For UC Santa Barbara to have three partnerships really speaks to our commitment to broadening participation in STEM disciplines,” said materials professor Ram Seshadri, the College of Engineering’s associate dean for research and director of the MRL. “The PREMs are a testament to the spirit on campus and within the College of Engineering to see a more inclusive and representative scientific workforce, and we are grateful for the opportunities to help make that become a reality.”