CCNY CREST Center for IDEALS Receives $5 million NSF Grant

The City College of New York’s CREST Center for Interface Design and Engineered Assembly of Low Dimensional Systems (IDEALS) is the recipient of a $5 million Phase 2 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The funding is from the NSF’s Centers of Research Excellence in Science and Technology (CREST) program that is devoted to enhancing the research capabilities of minority-serving institutions.

Since 2016, CCNY CREST’s mission has been to design, discover, and explore new and improved materials, while recruiting, training, and inspiring students from diverse backgrounds.

 “This is an exciting opportunity to build on our accomplishments from IDEALS so that we can continue to make crucial advances in the innovative and groundbreaking research being conducted by our team, and make long-lasting inroads towards diversity and inclusivity in the STEM professions,” said Maria Tamargo, CREST Center IDEALS Director/Principal Investigator and professor in CCNY’s Division of Science.

CCNY CREST works with outside institutions including Lehman College, the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center, the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, and Virginia Tech to build collaborations and share research and recruit students. 

“It is incredibly important for everyone to make the STEM professions more inclusive. We never know where the new life-changing discoveries will come from,” said Tamargo.

The CREST Center is currently conducting research in three major areas of materials science: materials sensing and quantum computing, bio-inspired materials for biomedical and energy applications, and novel analytical, numerical, and experimental techniques.

Phase 1 of the center began in 2016 with a similar NSF grant. This new grant will provide support for a second phase, which will build on and grow the Center’s research and recruitment goals for the next five years.

Tamargo hopes that in this second phase, the center will increase its faculty involvement, continue to prepare its students for professional and academic careers, and diversify the CCNY faculty through recruiting post-doctoral fellows.

“This project is a large team effort shared with my colleagues Professors Swapan Gayen, Lia Krusin-Elbaum, Ilona Kretzschmar, and Gustavo Lopez, and about 20 more faculty researchers from several CUNY campuses and beyond CUNY,” added Tamargo. 

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