Materials Innovation Platforms (MIP) is a mid-scale
infrastructure program in the Division of Materials Research (DMR) designed to
accelerate advances in materials research. MIPs respond to the increasing
complexity of materials research that requires close collaboration of
interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary teams and access to cutting edge tools.
These tools in a user facility benefit both a user program and in-house
research, which focus on addressing grand challenges of fundamental science and
meet national needs. MIPs embrace the paradigm set forth by the Materials
Genome Initiative (MGI), which strives to "discover, manufacture, and
deploy advanced materials twice as fast, at a fraction of the cost," and
conduct research through iterative "closed-loop" efforts among the
areas of materials synthesis/processing, materials characterization, and
theory/modeling/simulation. In addition, they are expected to engage the
emerging field of data science in materials research. Each MIP is a scientific
ecosystem, which includes in-house research scientists, external users and
other scientists who, collectively, form a community of practitioners and share
tools, codes, samples, data and know-how. The knowledge sharing is designed to
strengthen collaborations among scientists and enable them to work in new ways,
fostering new modalities of research and training, for the purpose of
accelerating discovery and development of new materials and novel materials
phenomena/properties, as well as fostering their eventual deployment.

The third MIP competition, in 2025, will accept proposals
on alloys, amorphous, and composite materials. Given that the second MIP
competition included an emphasis on biomaterials and polymer research,
proposals mainly on these topics will not be considered in the third MIP
competition.

Anticipated Funding Amount: $16,000,000

The proposed budget should be between $18,000,000 to
$30,000,000 over a six-year period, must be commensurate with the project's
scope, and thoroughly justified in the proposal. MIP funding is provided
yearly. Pending the availability of funds, it is anticipated that $16,000,000
will be available in Fiscal Year 2026.

Limit on Number of Proposals per PI or co-PI: 1

Individuals may be designated as Senior/Key Personnel
(Principal Investigator/Project Director, co-PI, and other faculty or
equivalent) on only one MIP proposal.

Cost Sharing Requirements: Inclusion of voluntary
committed cost sharing is prohibited.