~Roundtable The NSF's Role in Materials Engineering

FORUM Roundtable provides an inter­active format under which a group of esteemed and influential professionals within the materials community can dis­cuss, amplify and debate issues of im­portance to the minerals, metals and materials fields. Participants in FORUM Roundtable have an equal opportunity to respond to group questions, thereby lending their unique perspectives to not only the topical subjects under consid­eration, but to the comments of their colleagues as well.

This inaugural Roundtable focuses on the materials programming, funding ini­tiatives and educational concerns of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Our participants include: Win Aung, director of the Division of Mechanical and Struc­tural Systems under the NSF Directorate of Engineering; Bruce MacDonald, met­allurgy program director in the Division of Materials Research under the NSF Di­rectorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences; Ranga Komanduri, deputy director of the Division of Design and Manufacturing Systems; Robert Reynik, head of the Metallurgy, Polymers and Ceramics Section in the Division of Materials Research; Albert I. Schindler, director of the Division of Materials Research; and John A. White, NSF assistant director for engineering

Of the support NSF gives engineering, approximately what level of funding is available for materials?

John A. White (JW): Under the Engi­neering Directorate, it is fairly safe to estimate that our support is in excess of $10 million for materials research. In fact, the numbers, depending upon how you wanted to classify them, could be as high as $15 to $17 million.

Put in perspective, the 1989 budget for the Engineering Directorate is ap­proximately $188 million. That means that something on the order of about 10% of our budget goes toward materi­als research. This figure does not in­clude, however, research that is going on at the NSF industry-university co­operative research centers or our en­gineering research centers. If you in­clude these funds, I think the total figure is going to be very close to $20 million. And this is a conservative estimate.

Albert J. Schindler (AS): For 1988, the budget for the Division of Materials Research was approximately $111 mil­lion. With that money, the division sup­ports research across a broad spectrum

1989 May • JOM

This month's Roundtable participants (from left to right): John A. White, Robert J. Reynik, Bruce A. MacDonald, Ranga Komanduri, Albert I. Schindler and Win Aung.

of materials areas, ranging from con­densed matter physics and materials chemistry to metallurgy, ceramics and polymers. In addition to single investiga­tor research programs, we support ma­terials research groups at a level of approximately $500,000 annually. These are mUlti-investigator, single-research topic activities, and, at present, there are fifteen groups investigating various as­pects of materials research. We also fund nine materials research laborato­ries, which are larger activities that are each funded at a rate of between $1 and $5 million per year. Additionally, we support a number of national facilities.

The 1989 budget for all of our activities is approximately $115 million.

Robert J. Reynik (RR): From time to time, the Division of Materials Research promotes initiatives either on its own or in cooperation with other NSF units. As an example, the Division of Materials Research and the Division of Chemistry provide joint support of approximately $4 to $4.5 million for research at the inter­face of materials science and chemistry. Recently, the Division of Chemical and Thermal Systems within the Engineering Directorate has joined this activity.

NSF also provides support for interna­tional cooperative activities, including: research designed and conducted by in­vestigators from the U.S. and another

country; long- and medium-term research visits at foreign centers of excellence; re­search-oriented seminars and work­shops; and short-term scientific visits for planning cooperative activities.

JW: One point that should be under­scored is that within the foundation, many grants are jointly funded by one or more programs, one or more divisions, and one or more directorates. We do a lot of cross-program, cross-division and cross­directorate funding. We have found that in engineering, our relationship with the Division of Materials Research has been very, very good.

What are some of the current materi­als issues that NSF is encouraging?

Win Aung (WA): In the Division of Mechanical and Structural Systems, the focus is on materials processing-how to make new ceramics, new polymers, metal composites and so forth. We want to characterize materials properties in relation to the processing steps.

We are currently emphasizing inter­disciplinary approaches, including the application of mechanics principles such as those in solid mechanics; supercon­ductivity, an area that we spent well over one-half-a-million dollars researching during 1988; and composites, particu­larly with regard to materials properties.

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At present, we are looking at approxi­mately 15 sub-disciplines in materials processing, with major funding in poly­mer-, metal- and ceramic-matrix com­posites.

Ranga Komanduri (RK): In the Division of Design and Manufacturing Systems, we encourage investigations into manu­facturing processes, with a particular emphasis on the materials to be pro­cessed. Our thrust is geared more to­ward manufacturing processes that would be similar to all materials. One of the top issues in this area is the process­ing of superconducting materials, and we are collaborating with other groups within NSF in this regard.

AS: I view today as being the "golden age" for materials research. We can do so many things that were never before possible, including the use of supercom­puters to design new alloys and calcu­late their properties, and the application of new synthesis procedures, such as molecular-beam epitaxy.

There are many new techniques avail­able to characterize the materials, which range from single crystals and polycrys­talline materials to amorphous metals and metallic glasses. And we support research on an exciting variety of proper­ties that are present in these materials.

One of the exciting areas right now is the area of superconductivity. NSF has been a very strong supporter of super­conductivity, from materials chemistry to processing, and from condensed matter theory to materials evaluation. We also sponsor quite a lot of work at facilities such as the Francis Bitter National Magnet Laboratory, where a considerable amount of the work is carried out on characteriz­ing superconducting materials.

In 1988, a member of our staff esti­mated that the Division of Materials Research spent $14.4 milljon on super­conductivity research. In 1989, this amount is expected to increase to about $15.5 million.

Bruce A. MacDonald (BM): With regard to the metallurgy program, the field has many active research areas at present, and I want to particularly mention new processing techniques, new methods for characterizing microstructure, modeling and analysis of interfaces, nano-scale and non-equilibrium materials, metal­matrix composites, high-temperature intermetallic compounds, and advanced computational methods for modeling, analyzing and predicting properties of

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materials. In the metallurgy program, we support

all of these areas to a degree, but I would say our primary interests are nano-scale and non-equilibrium materials. We have a strong program and interest in model­ing and modifying interfaces to improve metal properties. Approximately one-third of the program involves studies on the relationships between the processing, structure and mechanical properties of metallic materials. We're particularly interested in advancing the use of com­puters to model materials structures and predict properties.

RR: Recently, NSF announced the first 11 awards in the science and technology center competition. Of these centers, four are rather prominent in the area of materials. For example, one center is at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in the area of high-performance polymeric compos­ites and adhesives. The second project deals with the structure, properties and processing of high-temperature super­conductors and involves several institu­tions-the University of Illinois, the Uni­versity of Chicago, Northwestern Uni­versity and Argonne National Labora­tory. A third activity deals with cement­based materials of a composite nature. The center is located at Northwestern, with subcontracts to the University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Purdue, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The fourth materials­oriented center is based at the University of California-Santa Barbara, where in­vestigators will explore novel concepts forfabricating extremely small structures in a new generation of compound semi­conductors made from gallium, arsenic and other materials.

JW: While NSF's engineering research centers are engineering-driven with a science support, the science and tech­nology centers tend to be science-driven with a technology objective and a tech­nology participation. The engineering research centers have a very strong incentive to work with industry in effect­ing technology transfer. Although both initiatives emphasize fundamental re­search, the idea behind the science and technology centers is much more of a fundamental-science driver, as opposed to an engineering- and technology-de­velopment driver.

How does NSF strike a balance be­tween addreSSing long- and short­term issues?

JW: The NSF has a unique charter. It has a responsibility, in a sense, for the nation's science and engineering health . And that concern spans from pre-school to post-doc. When you get into the human resource development issues, you rec­ognize that if we had a solution today relative to the pipeline problems in the participation of minorities and women in science and engineering, we would not see the results for maybe 20 years. There are just certain kinds of problems that have very long gestation periods.

At the same time, the NSF is essen­tially the only organization that has to be very concerned with the long term. I understand and am very empathetic with the view of the short-term purpose, but I would not want us to turn all of our attention that way, because five to ten years from now we would regret such a decision. We would wonder: "Why didn't this country, as large as it is, make a strategic investment in long-term re­search?" The National Science Founda­tion has that charter.

At the same time, it is important for us, especially in the Engineering Directorate, to have our research be problem-driven as opposed to methodology-driven. Meaning, researchers should have some end result or end application in mind within the Engineering Directorate. There may be other directorates that don't have to have that requirement. We cannot af­ford to invest our scarce resources un­less we do see that it is problem-driven. This very concern is a reason for NSF to have aclose association with industry. In this way, we can understand what the needs are, identify the problems, and shape our research agenda.

AS: In the Division of Materials Research, our program is not necessarily problem­driven, although the research we carry out frequently does end up solving im­portant problems. Still , our program is really driven toward understanding all aspects of materials.

The impact of the work we do is really quite great and very pervasive, ranging all the way from semiconductors and superconductors to high-strength struc­tural materials.

BM: In the metallurgy program, we try to reach a balance between extremely basic research and very new technological areas. An example of the former might be trying to understand the nature of grain-boundary or interface structures. An example of the latter is the study of the fundamental basis for phase equilib-

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rium in aluminum-lithium alloys, which are currently garnering cqnsiderable attention for aerospace applications. The division is not in the alloy development game in that sense, but we do try to supply basic fundamental research for areas that the mission-oriented agen­cies have entered.

WA: Dr. White mentioned the emphasis on focused research. This is a big con­cern of the Division of Mechanical and Structural Systems. The area of applied mechanics has been a very theoretical area in the past. Yet we have a large knowledge base in the field. How we translate this talent into useful research in materials processing and engineering is of great interest to us.

In an attempt to solve this problem, we have sponsored workshops where members of industry, academia and government have come together to address the issue of getting the funda­mental engineering research commu­nity to consider some of the important problem areas in materials processing. We are currently using the results of these meetings to pursue an effective agenda that will deal with this issue.

RK: With regard to what Dr. White said about the problem-oriented research, most of the projects we fund are individ­ual investigator awards. At the other end of the spectrum are the engineering re­search centers. One of the things we are doing to bridge the gap is funding group grants, through strategic manufacturing initiatives, so that researchers in dif­ferent disciplines can address problems of real significance.

RR: An example of mechanical behavior research conducted by one of the Divi­sion of Materials Research grantees is an investigation of the phenomena as­sociated with the initiation and propaga­tion of cracks in a wide range of metals, ceramics, semiconductors, composites, and high-performance polymers. The researcher has developed and is using tools which really fit into another cate­gory of significant interest-the non­destructive evaluation of materials with high value added. You can't simply take a failed ceramic composite and melt it , heat it, beat it and recycle it and expect it to recover properties.

What I'm suggesting is that .the re­search supported by the Division of Materials Research is fundamental in nature. Investigators research well-char­acterized systems to relate microscopic

1989 May - JOM

behavior to observed macroscopic prop­erties, taking into account the chemistry, structure and processing history in addi­tion to environmental conditions under which materials and materials systems operate. The goal is to understand these relationships to model, predict, control and improve the properties and perform­ance of materials and materials sys­tems. That's the kind of work we're talk­ing about when we discuss NFS-spon­sored materials research.

What about the education of tomor­row's engineers? Why can't the sci­ences attract women and minorities?

JW: It's the business that we're really about right now, and it's the one that, more than anything else, brought me to the foundation. I think that the sciences and engineering are losing market shares, to put it bluntly, with bright kids, be they male or female, regardless of their race. In 1987, not a single Ph.D. in electrical engineering was given to a black American in this country. Not one. And, across all degree levels, engineering has far lower percentage of women working towards degrees than any of the sciences. The sciences themselves are not in that good a shape, especially at the doctoral level.

We hear a lot of complaints about the percentage of graduate students who were not born in the U.S. My response is that we don't have too many foreign students in graduate school, we have too few American students. Thank good­ness we have the foreign students. The scary part is that many bright kids are deciding to go back to their countries when they graduate. And there is some segment of our population that, for rea­sons I don't understand, think that op­portunities should not be made available to them to stay here and contribute.

Regarding the issue of women, the foundation is proposing a fellowship program specifically targeted towards women in the doctoral program to try and do something to get more role models. Right now there is an absolute lack of role models. If you go to some of this country's preeminent educational insti­tutions, you may find only one black and two or three female faculty members in the college of engineering.

Part of the problem may be that this country does not place much premium on science and engineering in the edu­cational base for our kids. A lot of parents advise their kids to go elsewhere.

Nationally, there are 421 women with

doctorates holding a professorial-rank position in engineering. That's two per­cent of the engineering faculty. Black Americans represent less than one per­cent of the engineering faculty.

We've got to take a hard look at the product we call engineering, and, to a lesser extent, this product called sci­ence, and figure out how we're going to sell it to bright kids.

AS: Those are also my sentiments. We have to do more. NSF has programs designed to provide research opportuni­ties for women and minorities. This is a particularly auspicious time to try and push our programs further, particularly with regard to students entering univer­sities. We should take advantage of the great interest in superconductivity and emphasize it in high schools so that those students will be aware of career opportunities in materials research.

We are also working on undergradu­ate materials curricula development in the various disciplines represented by the Division of Materials Research. This activity has been supported by the Divi­sion's Advisory Committee. We would like to bring together educators from physics, chemistry and materials sci­ence and engineering to look into the materials curricula issue.

JW: You could use all the money that the NSF has, every nickel of almost $2 bil­lion, and not be able to solve this prob­lem. The best that NSF can do with its resources is to try to sensitize the nation to the seriousness of the issue, provide some catalyst-type programs, show the feasibility of concepts and ideas, and inspire cities, industry, local groups and individual citizens to say "I want to help make a difference. I want to get involved in the classrooms and the PTA." And that's what I think it's going to ultimately take. You can't just say: "It's NSF's job."

One big problem is that our kids are not strongly encouraged to go on to graduate school. It's hard for a company to say, "I'm not going to aggressively pursue that young person to work for us. Instead, I'm going to encourage them to make their contribution for this country in the classroom as a professor." But hope­fully, when associations and groups of companies look atthe long-term interest of this country and the long-term inter­ests of their companies, they'll all start making an investment in the future gen­erations of engineers and scientists by insuring that we've got bright hopes in the classroom.

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