Future Directions

The success of the Center depends on directed growth, that successfully marries the three tiers of research -materials, devices and systems. Historically, the materials thrust has been in basic research, the systems thrust corresponded to applied research, and the devices thrust somewhere in between. While the expectation that this mapping will continue to apply, there will be exceptions. For example, recent proposals in the systems effort contained significant basic research components in the area of control theory.

There are a number of ways to promote growth of CEET. One is to leverage the established presence of the materials research effort to branch out in other directions, for example with a multidisciplinary ERC proposal with a heavy focus on basic research but with significant devices and systems components. The other way is to leverage the substantial systems infrastructure that has become available to UNM in the area of distributed energy systems, with a value of several 10s of $M. Of course, leveraging both research presence and infrastructure further improves the probability of success.