About MRI
"We strive to create an environment that cuts across traditional academic R & D boundaries, enables discovery and scientific exploration through creative cross-fertilization, and benefits both science and industry. This is strategic policy at the Penn State MRI."
- Carlo Pantano,
Director, Penn State MRI and Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
Penn State’s Materials Research Institute was created to coordinate the highly diverse and growing materials activities across Penn State’s sprawling main campus. MRI was designed to break down the academic walls that traditionally divide disciplines and thereby enable faculty to collaborate across departmental and even college boundaries. MRI has become a model for this interdisciplinary approach to research, both within and outside the university.
The Future of Materials Research
Materials research is linked to virtually every field of science and engineering. The discovery and development of new materials enables advances across a multitude of diverse technologies, from computer chips to consumer electronics to building materials, energy, and automobile manufacturing. Materials research contributes to economic progress by developing advanced materials for new technologies and by lowering the cost and enhancing the performance of more established technologies.
The future of materials research is nearly unlimited, with tremendous opportunities in high performance and novel materials enabled by our recent ability to manipulate matter at the atomic and molecular scales. This size scale, which is about the same as that of biological structures, opens up a whole new world at the interface of materials and life sciences. Penn State and MRI are preparing to expand into this new research frontier.
Penn State’s MRI is proud to be one of the world leaders in materials research and to continue to push the boundaries of materials science in all applications.
