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Director's Message:
Happy Springtime!
If you haven't already done so - I would encourage you to
register for our late Spring FORUM event on May 3rd. Here - you can learn about new ways of enhancing your innovation efforts in ways that can allow you to effectively interview students over several months as well as test out new approaches, develop a process, build an apparatus, make measurements on advanced instrumentation, or hire an advanced graduate student to work on a project at your company! The point of this is of course, to introduce you to the key people who can help make things happen here -- and if you forget who they are, you can always come to me.
An interesting paper put out by the National Academies discussing the metrics and pathways of innovation - bringing in industry, government, and academia. Apparently, about "two-thirds of inventions acquired from outside sources were acquired through non-market based channels". Additionally, "firms with less technical capability often commercialize inventions from external sources, while firms with greater technical capability rely more heavily on outside knowledge, such as that provided from university researchers, in order to invent internally".
Another key point that stood out was that "partnerships among the federal government, universities, and national laboratories was a 'rich discovery ecosystem' ". Argonne and Fermi National Labs have been a strong partner with us in creating this fertile ground for translation of discovery. With our interest in getting 3rd and 4th year graduate students out for industrial internships,
faculty who are extremely good at writing proposals to get federal funding, and a point person (me!) to help industry make this connection with the IME, what's your excuse for not tapping into this promising framework?
Feel free to reach out to me with any questions you may have!
Best,
Felix
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Stuart Rowan is a Professor in Molecular Engineering at the Institute for Molecular Engineering.
Stuart was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1969 and grew up in Troon, Aryshire on the west coast of Scotland. He received his Ph.D. University of Glasgow where he worked on Supramolecular Crystal Engineering of Inclusion Compounds in 1995. He also worked on the development of Dynamic Combinatorial Libraries focusing on the transesterification reaction, and numerous new methods for the construction of interlocked species, specifically using dynamic covalent chemistry and “surrogate” stoppers. In 1999 he was appointed as an Assistant Professor to the Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2005 and became a Full Professor in 2008.
His research interests focus on the potential of dynamic chemistry (covalent and non-covalent) in the construction and properties of structurally dynamic polymeric materials. His group works on supra-molecular polymers, self-healing materials, stimuli-responsive material and nano-composites, metal-containing polymers, gels, bio-materials, and developing new synthetic methods for the construction of complex polymeric architectures.
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Graduate Student Internships
Are you looking for interns with a highly developed laboratory and/or computational skill set? We are encouraging our 3rd and 4th year PhD students who are curious about industrial positions to seek out internships with companies. Companies can help by providing contact points and a description of the position. Please send any questions or solicitations to
Felix
.
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This work, and far more, comes out of the network of labs that constitute the Comprehensive Cancer Center, one of only two National Cancer Institute–designated cancer centers in Illinois. Founded on UChicago interdisciplinary principles, the Cancer Center brings together faculty members from UChicago Medicine, the
Biological Sciences Division
and the
Physical Sciences Division
. Some are also members of the two-year-old Microbiome Center and the seven-year-old
Institute for Molecular Engineering
. With so many minds at work, the effort is moving fast and findings rapidly build upon each other.
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Additive manufacturing’s promise to revolutionize industry is constrained by a widespread problem: tiny gas pockets in the final product, which can lead to cracks and other failures.
New research published today in
Science
, led by teams from Carnegie Mellon University and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, has identified how and when these gas pockets form, as well as a methodology to predict their formation — information that could dramatically improve the 3D printing process.
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“This is a real success story of technology transfer and collaboration between a national lab and an industrial firm,” Som said. “Argonne is constantly on the lookout for such partnerships that tap its expertise and facilities. This partnership nets benefits ultimately for the consumers, speeding technology to market that is cleaner and more fuel efficient, for a societal win.”
Som and his team used supercomputers at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, a DOEOffice of Science User Facility, and Argonne’s Laboratory Computing Resource Center. The research was funded by DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy through its Vehicle Technologies Office.
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“Clean water is needed for everything, not just for personal consumption or even for growing food,” added Darling, director of the Institute for Molecular Engineering at Argonne and of the Advanced Materials for Energy-Water Systems (AMEWS) Center, a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center. “It’s needed for making each and every thing that we use, including electricity.”
And as clean water supplies are increasingly stressed due to pollution, unsustainable extraction, and extreme weather events, demand is skyrocketing, particularly for more “fit-for-purpose” water — water of the required quality and quantity to meet demand as it’s needed, where it’s needed. Drinking water, for example, needs to be cleaner than water for cooling in a power plant.
Argonne’s longstanding and deep experience in solving the most pressing questions in materials and chemistry research positions the laboratory to grapple with the challenge of increasing fit-for-purpose water supplies. The laboratory’s contributions span from basic research discovery to scaled-up manufacturing techniques that bring new technologies closer to market.
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The university and the nearby national labs recently hosted National Defense and a handful of other journalists at its Science of Innovation Summit. The goal was to spread the word about the technological prowess found in the Chicago area. It’s considerable but rarely mentioned as one of the nation’s innovation hubs.
Today, the University of Chicago operates Argonne on behalf of the Department of Energy. It is part of a hub that includes the nearby Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, where scientists are working to understand the very fabric of the universe. While that is basic research and seemingly of little concern to the defense world, that is not entirely correct. Researchers there are using what they learn about protons, electrons, atoms and neutrinos and applying it to quantum computing and quantum communications. These fields are in their infancy, but they are potential game-changers for national security.
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Brainstorming for questions, not answers, wasn’t something I’d tried before. It just occurred to me in that moment, probably because I had recently been reading sociologist Parker Palmer’s early work about creative discovery through open, honest inquiry. But this technique worked so well with the students that I began experimenting with it in consulting engagements, and eventually it evolved into a methodology that I continue to refine. By now I’ve used it with hundreds of clients, including global teams at Chanel, Danone, Disney, EY, Fidelity, Genentech, Salesforce, and dozens of other companies; nonprofit organizations; and individual leaders I’ve coached.
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In
a study
of C-level executives at 840 companies from eight countries and 14 industries with revenues over $500 million, we identified a small number that appear to be bucking the trend. Their secret: They strive to innovate in ways that would have a major impact on markets and society, and they revamped how their organizations pursued innovation and brought their capabilities together in a single “architecture.”
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In today’s science and business worlds, it’s increasingly common to hear that solving big problems requires a big team. But a new analysis of more than 65 million papers, patents and software projects found that smaller teams produce much more disruptive and innovative research.
In a new paper published by Nature
, University of Chicago researchers examined 60 years of publications and found that smaller teams were far more likely to introduce new ideas to science and technology, while larger teams more often developed and consolidated existing knowledge.
While both large and small teams are essential for scientific progress, the findings suggest that recent trends in research policy and funding toward big teams should be reassessed.
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Corporate innovation teams are one of the most important groups we see working with startups to help drive revenue. Individuals who work in these groups are tasked with helping their company grow through mergers and acquisitions (M&A), strategic pilots, or partnerships with startups nimble enough to work with a larger corporation.
If startups are going to have increased chances of succeeding, corporate innovation groups are going to play a larger and larger role in the startup ecosystem, which I personally believe is good for everyone.
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The availability of resources needed to develop the next generation of materials is not guaranteed, particularly in the US, which is also facing growing competition from overseas. That is according to
a new report
from the
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
, which calls on US government agencies to upgrade or replace key infrastructure as well as develop a national strategy to bring together research teams from academia, government and industry.
Commissioned by the
National Science Foundation
(NSF) and the
Department of Energy
, the report — Frontiers of Materials Research: A Decadal Survey — builds on two previous decadal surveys of the field that were published in 1990 and 2010. The latest report identifies several areas that are “critical” to the field, including computational materials science and engineering as well as digital manufacturing and materials for quantum information science. It also finds that bringing together computational methods with materials characterization and synthesis is accelerating the discovery of designer materials and their use in products.
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Here’s the problem: In mandating and planning for collaborative initiatives, leaders tend to focus on logistics and processes, incentives and outcomes. That makes perfect sense. But in doing so they forget to consider how the groups they’re asking to work together might experience the request—especially when those groups are being told to break down walls, divulge information, sacrifice autonomy, share resources, or even cede responsibilities that define them as a group. All too often, groups feel threatened by such demands, which seem to represent openings for others to encroach on their territory. What if the collaboration is a sign that they’ve become less important to the company? What if they give up important resources and areas of responsibility and never get them back? What will happen to their reputation?
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April 10, 2019 (WED)
April 24, 2019 (WED)
Professor Jeffrey Moore
(UIUC) on the topic of the synthesis and study of large organic molecules and the discovery of new polymeric materials.
May 8, 2019 (WED)
May 22, 2019 (WED)
Professor Sven Rogge
(U. New South Wales) on the topic of the physics of qubit coupling with the environment to understand decoherence pathways and control.
June 5, 2019 (WED)
Professor Ralph Colby
(PSU) on the topic of molecular-level understanding of dynamics in interesting liquids.
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What do carbon fiber, steel, textiles, shampoo, and laundry detergent have in common? They can all be made directly from coal or have their cost and performance improved with additives derived from coal. Innovative work at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) is attempting to expand that list to include engineered cements and plastics, water filtration devices, battery materials, 3D printing materials, and many other consumer products that are in demand in the global marketplace.
Around 2007/2008, coal production topped out at roughly 1.2 billion tons. Since then, coal production has been falling, mostly due to the attractive pricing of natural gas resources for producing electricity. According to the Annual Coal Report issued by the DOE’s Energy Information Agency, maximum production was down to 0.77 billion tons in 2017.
Despite this downward trend in using coal for electricity production, coal may also find applications in markets not previously considered by the industry. In fact, coal can be used as a feedstock for manufacturing high-valued carbon products and materials and NETL is working to develop new technologies for these applications.
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Physicists have discovered a new effect, which makes it possible to create excellent thermal insulators which conduct electricity. Such materials can be used to convert waste heat into electrical energy.
Every day we lose valuable energy in the form of
waste heat
—in technical devices at home, but also in large energy systems. Part of it could be recovered with the help of the "thermoelectric effect." The
heat flow
from a hot device to the cold environment can be directly converted into electrical power. To achieve that, however, materials with very special properties are required. They have to be good electrical conductors, but bad thermal conductors – two requirements which are difficult to reconcile.
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Ghaffarivardavagh and Zhang let mathematics—a shared passion that has buoyed both of their engineering careers and made them well-suited research partners—guide them toward a workable design for what the acoustic metamaterial would look like.
They calculated the dimensions and specifications that the metamaterial would need to have in order to interfere with the transmitted
sound waves
, preventing sound—but not air—from being radiated through the open structure. The basic premise is that the metamaterial needs to be shaped in such a way that it sends incoming sounds back to where they came from, they say.
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Mercedes-Benz’s research and development division is researching how quantum computers could be used to discover new materials for advanced batteries in electric cars within the next decade.
Discovering new battery materials could “unlock a billion-dollar opportunity,” said Benjamin Boeser, director of open innovation at Mercedes-Benz Research and Development North America. Mercedes-Benz is a brand of
Daimler
AG .
“We could simulate the actual behavior of a battery with a quantum computer, which is currently not possible with existing computer power,” Mr. Boeser said.
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Coal’s brittle performance in extreme weather was also apparent at the other end of the spectrum in Australia’s recent
historic heatwave
. Temperatures exceeding 120° Fahrenheit forced up to 40 percent of the state of Victoria’s coal generation capacity
offline
, causing brownouts for thousands of homes, while wind and solar energy
outperformed expected
output.
“We have aging coal-fired power stations,"
said
Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio. “They are becoming less reliable.”
Australian coal outages weren’t limited to its record heatwave. Coal-fired power plants broke down 135 different times nationwide during 2018, or once every 2.7 days, often due to extreme heat. “Coal-fired power is simply unreliable in the heat,”
said
Mark Ogge of The Australia Institute.
Solar, on the other hand, performed “the best of all energy sources” during the record-breaking Australian heatwave, according to the Australia Institute’s
National Energy Emissions Audit for January
. “Solar saved the day,” said Dr. Hugh Sadler, the report’s author.
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The service is one example of a shift to a circular economy model. Rather than just mining materials and manufacturing products that ultimately end up in landfills, companies are increasingly trying to figure out how to use resources in closed loops. In a
new survey
of 300 executives, ING found that 62% of American companies now plan to move toward circularity. Another 16% already use circular economy principles. Nearly twice as many U.S. companies say that they are embedding sustainability in strategic decision-making in 2019 compared to 2018.
Still, most companies are in the early stages of understanding what the circular economy means and how they could work within it. When asked what’s at the core of the model, most executives say that it’s about reducing waste or making sure that products are recycled, missing the full picture of benefits–if products and materials stay in use longer, that also means less resource extraction and less risk in supply chains, and cutting climate pollution.
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Different ways to explore interactions with the IME:
- senior design projects
- internships
- materials characterization /device fabrication facilities
- participation in FORUM events
- consulting activities
- Ask Felix!
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Scientists have discovered how to turn back the carbon emissions clock by converting carbon dioxide into a solid, coal-like material. The process is made possible by a liquid metal catalyst that reduces carbon dioxide at room temperature.
With carbon dioxide emissions becoming an ever bigger problem for Earth’s climate, researchers are scrambling for ways to
capture the potent greenhouse gas
or
convert it into useful chemicals
. However, many carbon dioxide capture methods produce liquids or gases. ‘There’s a lot of debate at the moment about the security of storing carbon dioxide as a gas because of potential leaks,’ says carbon conversion expert
Jennifer Rudd
from Swansea University, UK, who wasn’t involved in the study.
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Up until now, it was impossible to reproduce the process of growing nanowires on silicon semiconductors – there was no way to repeatedly produce homogeneous nanowires in specific positions. But researchers from EPFL's Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials, run by Anna Fontcuberta i Morral, together with colleagues from MIT and the IOFFE Institute, have come up with a way of growing nanowire networks in a highly controlled and fully reproducible manner. The key was to understand what happens at the onset of nanowire growth, which goes against currently accepted theories. Their work has been published in
Nature Communications
.
"We think that this discovery will make it possible to realistically integrate a series of nanowires on silicon substrates," says Fontcuberta i Morral. "Up to now, these nanowires had to be grown individually, and the process couldn't be reproduced."
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You are welcome to park for free on certain streets if you can find it. The closest parking lot to the Eckhardt Research Center is the North parking lot.
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