WWW.mrfn.org
MATERIALS RESEARCH FACILITIES NETWORK
Ram Seshadri
Co-Director, UCSB Materials Research Laboratory: An NSF MRSEC
Professor, Materials, and Chemistry & Biochemistry
University of California, Santa Barbara CA 93106
with help from Dr. Amorette Getty, MRFN Director
ABOUT THE MRFN
Collaborative effort, initially established between the NSF MRSEC shared
experimental facilities at:
University of California at Santa Barbara
University of Minnesota
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
University of Southern Mississippi
University of Wisconsin at Madison
Focus on increasing the visibility and usage of analytical and computational
instrumental centers within the community.
Now extended to 27 centers !
THE MRFN: SOME (QUESTIONABLE) DATA
Shared
Experimental
Facilities at K-12 Outreach
27 MRSECs
Undergraduate Students
Over 250 companies
Small Companies
Large Companies
MRFN
National Laboratories
Graduate Students
PUIs
Minority Serving Institutions
Over 200 Universities and
Colleges
Over 3000 Publications and Patents
Over 7000 Unique Users
Expansion to PREM centers in 2014
THE NEED FOR MRFN
Materials 2022 Report
“…Appropriate goals for a successful program of investments in
instrumentation and facilities (include) …
• To provide access to a full range of cutting edge commercial
instrumentation.
• To provide geographically distributed access to a full range of equipment
capabilities for materials synthesis, characterization and processing.
• To play a crucial role in the education of successive generations of
instrument and facility users, developers and operators.
• To enable access to unique experimental capabilities that are beyond the
scale of individual investigator laboratories.”
THE NEED FOR MRFN
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
• Improved access to scientific instrumentation as a means to jump start
innovation
• Critical component of the materials innovation infrastructure that needs to
be built up for MGI to succeed
• Resource for entrepreneurs, particularly startups and small businesses
THE NEED FOR MRFN: TANGIBLE EXAMPLES
Kristin Denault (UCSB
Graduate Student) and
Catherine Oertel (Oberlin,
Associate Professor)
Kristin is starting a solid
state lighting company.
Catherine would like to
occasionally use the
instrumentation she
became familiar with at
the Cornell MRSEC.
SUPPORT FROM MRFN FOR USERS
Requesting Funds:
Last 18 months:
12 funding applications for MRFN
support in the range of $1000 to $5000
each
Iowa State University
Augsburg College
Concordia University
Elizabeth City State University
Minneapolis Community & Technical College
Primarily covering instrument usage
and training costs, also occasionally,
some travel/lodging
Morgan State University, Physics
Concordia University Saint Paul
University of St. Thomas
University of St. Thomas
Recent update: Automated forwarding
of funding applications to specific
Centers
University of Akron
Concordia University St Paul
Integrating facility and equipment data: Goals
Enhance efficiency of research by increasing awareness/access to:
• Local instrumentation on individual campuses
• Maximizing interdisciplinary benefits
• Regional or national specialty instrumentation within fields
• MRFN, NNIN, ABRF, PREMIER network…
equipment.data.ac.uk
10,000 pieces of equipment already
listed. Standardized format for
listing facilities and instruments
(UNIQUIP Publishing Specification);
Standardized taxonomy for
categorizing instrumentation
costing more than $50k (N8
Equipment Inventory Taxonomy);
Discussion on developing a CASRAI
standard for Research
Instrumentation
Reusing the mrfn.org model: A UCSB example
MRFN next steps
Building connections among Technical Directors/Staff
• Is it time for the next MRFN Workshop? (Last held Nov 2011)
• Would Technical Staff in the network request any specific
events or tools to help them do their jobs better?
• Webinars, mini-symposia etc?
Other goals
• Integrating access and scheduling information for facilities on
the website: Are there initial steps we could take? Would it be
desired?
• Enabling cross-compatibility of the MRFN database with other
local, regional, and national instrumentation databases to
maximize publicity of instrument data and availability.
YESTERDAY EVENING’S SCREENGRAB
Google Analytics - Site Usage
• Average 1000 visitors per month
• Over 150 users who are actually searching through site
• Some visitors are finding instrument pages directly from Google
search
• Over 50 training materials / application downloads
Enhanced website capabilities
• 1120 instruments – about 60% growth from site launch last year
• Search by instrument type or by facility
• Find instruments and experts by types of research, for eg.:
mrfn.org/instrument-type/transmission-electron-microscopy
• Web Program Application is automatically forwarded to centers where
instruments are requested
Maintain consistent instrumentation data
• Instruments and facilities information automatically updated on mrsec.org
from mrfn.org
• Each center can set automatic updates to MRFN – pilot project tested for
MRL UCSB
• UCSB extended MRFN model and software for all UCSB instrumentation
http://www.sharedinstrumentation.ucsb.edu/
• Software package is available to MRSECs
THANK YOU