The National Science Foundation awarded Brandeis University a highly competitive $7.8 million grant to establish a Materials Research Science and Engineering Center on Sept. 1.The center will be collaboration among physicists, biochemists, chemists and biologists who will study the "effects of imposing constraints on [DNA, liquid crystals, colloids and polymers at a molecular scale] . as a guide to engineering semiconductor nanoparticles into shapes and forms suitable for applications such as biosensors and solar cells," according to a press release.

Prof. Robert Meyer (PHYS), the director of the center and the principal investigator for the MRSEC grant said, "Brandeis is really a first-rate place in the scientific world. To me that's one of the very important messages of the grant. We got the grant because of the high-quality of the science department."

Meyer said, "The grant is all about the combination and overlap of physical science with biological science. . We can learn how materials are used in biology. By taking what we learn from these materials, we can better understand the biological processes. When we learn how things work in a biological system, we can try to mimic that for making artificial systems that are similar to the biological systems."

Four out of the 87 universities that applied won $7.8 million grants, and nine out of 13 universities applied through the same process that were awarded a renewal of the grant if they had won the MRSEC grant in previous years.

The process of applying for the grant started over a year ago when schools submitted a pre-proposal, a simpler outline of the detailed proposal according to Meyer, who submitted Brandeis' proposal in October 2007. In January, 36 schools were invited to submit full proposals of their project, and in April, Brandeis and 17 other schools were invited to Washington to present the proposal in front of a panel from the National Science Foundation. Brandeis heard it won the grant in mid-July, but it wasn't officially awarded until Sept. 1.

Meyer said "It is an intellectual center, not purely located in one building, and has participants from several departments." Participants in the Center come from departments in physics, chemistry, biology and biochemistry.

The MRSEC grant will play an important role in creating "components of education, outreach and external collaboration," according to Brandeis' project proposal submitted to the National Science Foundation. The grant will sponsor research for science majors and the Science Posse Program, a merit-based scholarship program recently established by one of the MRSEC senior investigators.

Brandeis' Education program as part of the Master of Arts in Teaching degree will start an innovative summer program for high school teachers and will teach the "modern techniques of modern fluorescence microscopy."

The grant will also fund a partnership between the MRSEC and the Discover Museums in Acton, Mass., to develop a hands-on interactive exhibit in the areas of Biological Physics and Material Science in biological systems. These programs are being sponsored by the MRSEC, according to the project proposal.

Meyer said, "When you have one of these centers, a big component is how you outreach outside the university. We are going to do things where we try to interact with students, undergraduates here, of course, and grad students doing research. We will try really hard to make sure that this research center has a big role in education."

In addition to the newly acquired grant money, the MRSEC will use royalties received from the Smart Balance buttery spread invention.

Brandeis, the smallest university to have a materials research center, has 12 senior investigators from four departments and one of each from Brown University and Olin College of Engineering.

According to the press release, the MRSEC grant is "more the just a large grant, this put Brandeis on the world map as one of the leaders in the exciting endeavor of combining physics and chemistry with the life sciences."

The MRSEC is "not just a grant; but it's a whole focus and direction for science at Brandeis which emphasizes this collaboration of physical and biological sciences and we will be building on that," Meyer said.