Materials Research Institute (MRI) Tour

Come out and learn about your Innovation Park neighbor!

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 Materials Research Institute was created to coordinate the highly diverse and growing materials activities across Penn State's 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.

MRI coordinates, administers, and supports several state-of-the-art research, fabrication, and characterization facilities at Penn State that are available to the academic and non-academic research communities.  These shared facilities are staffed with full-time technical personnel who train researchers to use the instrumentation and tools themselves or assist researchers with their characterization and fabrication needs.  The materials research centers are founded by faculty teams with the experience and expertise to address specific areas requiring an interdisciplinary approach, and are supported by industry and/or US government funding.

According to the latest available National Science Foundation data, Penn State ranks 9th overall among U.S. universities in research expenditures and 2nd in support from industry.  In the field of materials research, Penn State is the national leader, with more research support from government and industry than any other university in the country.  This support allows Penn State to discover and develop new materials and new materials processes in the broad areas of energy, health, national security, and the environment, along with the fundamental research that will lead to innovation in the next generation of researchers.