UPR-Mayagüez gets $4.2M in National Science Foundation research funding
The participants will receive $700,000 for six years under the grant funding conditions.
The University of Puerto Rico (UPR), Mayagüez Campus (RUM, in Spanish), one of the colleges involved with the Center for Advancing Research and Training for STEM Success, has received a $4.2 million grant to conduct cutting-edge materials research and provide training for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as teachers and future university students in fields related to materials science and engineering.
Under the grant’s funding conditions, participants will receive $700,000 a year for six years.
The Center for Advancing Research and Training for STEM Success brings together researchers from RUM, the UPR Medical Sciences Campus, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC).
“This grant was awarded as part of the NSF Partnership for Research and Education in Materials (PREM) program, in which we will work on the discovery, development and design of functional materials, which can be used in applications such as heterogeneous catalysis, superconductors, biosensors and bioinstructive materials for regenerative medicine, for example. Other areas are pharmaceutical formulations,” explained Claribel Acevedo-Vélez, the project’s principal investigator.
Acevedo-Vélez is joined by co-investigator Yomaira Pagán-Torres, along with Camilo Mora, Ubaldo Córdoba and Arturo Hernández from the Department of Chemical Engineering; Armando Rúa de la Asunción and Sergiy Lysenko from the Department of Physics; Carmen Bellido from the Teacher Preparation Program; and Bernadette Delgado from the Department of Psychology.
An essential component of the initiative is providing research opportunities and work platforms for high school, master’s degree and doctoral students to help them successfully complete their degrees.
“We will support them financially to complete their studies. In addition, they will have opportunities to work at the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at the University of Wisconsin during the summers to actively participate in our collaborators’ laboratories, having access to equipment that we may not have available here or learning new techniques that they can then bring to implement in our facilities,” Acevedo-Vélez said.
“It’s a super important educational experience for the development of students, both in science and engineering,” she added.
The center will also include an educational outreach component aimed at motivating children and young people to pursue university studies in these disciplines.
Furthermore, RUM undergraduate students will have access to workshops on entrepreneurship, innovation and strategic skills, empowering them with the tools needed for their professional futures. They will also receive mentorship to guide them in their decisions regarding graduate school or industry careers.