The Materials Processing Center (MPC) is an interdisciplinary center within MIT's School of Engineering. MPC provides an environment where industry, government, and academia can collaborate to identify and address multidisciplinary issues in materials processing and manufacturing.
MPC focuses on strengthening and enhancing its intellectual community, increasing industrial outreach, and creating partnerships with industry to focus on research and education. These partnerships address current issues in all materials sectors, but especially in energy, information technology, transportation, primary materials, construction, biotechnology, and technologies for sustainability.
In keeping with MIT's educational mission, MPC cosponsors the MPC/CMSE Summer Scholar Program, inviting outstanding undergraduate students nationwide to participate in ongoing MIT materials research. The program has brought hundreds of students in their junior and senior years in college to conduct graduate-level materials research.
With its Industry Collegium, MPC acts as the primary window to industry for MIT's broad materials research community. Collegium member companies benefit from this liaison with MIT in many ways. Publications promoting materials processing activities at MIT are distributed widely to industrial and government contacts. MPC sponsors a major workshop involving both students and faculty during its Materials Day celebration each fall. In cooperation with MIT's Industrial Liaison Program, MPC and the Microphotonics Center also provide a forum for industrial representatives to discuss their needs and problems one-on-one with MIT faculty and researchers. MPC also encourages exchanges between academia and industry, through visiting scientists, adjunct faculty appointments, and industrial internship educational opportunities.
The Microphotonics Center is a center within MPC that builds interdisciplinary teams focused on advancing basic materials science and emerging technology in integrated photonic systems. It serves as a research community in which industry, government, and academia collaborate to create new materials, structures, and architectures for the emerging "microphotonics platform"—the menu of on-chip and circuit-board level devices and components that will comprise future optoelectronics for computing, imaging, and learning. The Microphotonic Industry Consortium creates a proactive forum where scientists, engineers, and strategists from industry and MIT can work as partners in exploring and pursuing innovative microphotonics research and development.
For more information on the Materials Processing Center, the MPC Industry Collegium, the Summer Scholar Program, or the Microphotonics Center, contact Mark Beals, associate director, Room 12-007, 617-253-2129, mbeals@mit.edu.