Materials and Surface Engineering (MSE)

 The MSE program supports fundamental research that is intended to enhance the basic understanding of materials in the solid state, including interrelationships among constitution, structure, and properties.  The broad intellectual scope of the MSE program includes structural and functional materials in the bulk as well as surfaces and interfaces.  Approaches to discovery may entail experimental, theoretical, computational modeling and simulation, especially ab initio modeling and simulation and coarser grained approaches, including molecular dynamics and multi-scale approaches through the micro-scale, and combinations of these three approaches.  Specifically encouraged are proposals that focus on the mechanical, physical, and thermophysical properties of metallic, ceramic, and polymeric materials and composite materials based on these matrices.

Except for solicitations and other funding opportunities that specifically identify the participation of the MSE program, domains that lie outside of the scope of this program and in which proposals are discouraged and are subject to return without review are those that focus on (1) biological, bio-inspired, biomimetic and materials for which the application is biological or biomedical, (2) electronic or photonic materials or the electronic or photonic properties of materials, (3) material and surface processing, and (4) friction and wear except those in which the stated goal is to elucidate the atomic/molecular basis or origins of friction.