Multi-Institutional Collaborations for Materials Research and Learning

With a target audience of materials undergraduate and graduate students, educators, and researchers, MatDL Pathway (http://matdl.org) assumes stewardship of significant content and services to support the integration of materials research and education. MatDL is a consortium involving NIST, Kent State University, MIT, University of Michigan, Purdue University, and Iowa State University. Highlights of MatDL’s efforts over the past year include: 1) hosting roundtables at meetings of major, international, materials professional societies such as the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) and the Materials Research Society (MRS). As a result of this outreach, new educational collaborators, such as RPI, as well as research projects, such as LAMMPS administered by Sandia National Labs, have been attracted to MatDL’s Matforge workspace for collaborative development of materials modeling and simulation tools. 2) contributing to the expansion of virtual labs offerings to enhance students’ conceptual understanding of economies of exchange phenomena related to dimerization and dissociation. 3) collaborating with Cleveland State University and 12 university partners to expand and disseminate work on materials failure cases. By offering materials educators convenient access to relevant, shared learning resources based on research, MatDL, as part of NSDL, helps to positively impact both teaching and learning within materials and cognate disciplines.

Authors: Laura M. Bartolo, Sharon C. Glotzer; Donald R. Sadoway; James A. Warren; Matthew John M. Krane; Adam C. Powell IV; Krishna Rajan; Diane Geraci; Vinod K. Tewary; Cathy S. Lowe