M ATERIALS R ESEARCH F ACILITIES N ETWORK Ram Seshadri Co-Director, UCSB Materials Research Laboratory: An NSF MRSEC Professor, Materials, and Chemistry & Biochemistry University of California, Santa Barbara CA with help from Dr. Amorette Getty, MRFN Director

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 ! A BOUT THE MRFN

T HE MRFN: S OME ( QUESTIONABLE ) DATA Graduate Students K-12 Outreach Undergraduate Students Minority Serving Institutions Small Companies Large Companies National Laboratories PUIs Shared Experimental Facilities at 27 MRSECs Expansion to PREM centers in 2014 Over 200 Universities and Colleges Over 7000 Unique Users Over 250 companies Over 3000 Publications and Patents 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.” T HE 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 T HE NEED FOR MRFN

T HE NEED FOR MRFN: T ANGIBLE 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.

S UPPORT FROM MRFN FOR USERS Last 18 months: 12 funding applications for MRFN support in the range of $1000 to $5000 each Primarily covering instrument usage and training costs, also occasionally, some travel/lodging Recent update: Automated forwarding of funding applications to specific Centers Requesting Funds: Iowa State University Augsburg College Concordia University Elizabeth City State University Minneapolis Community & Technical College Morgan State University, Physics Concordia University Saint Paul University of St. Thomas 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.

Y ESTERDAY 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 Software package is available to MRSECs

THANK YOU