NSF Award
9019074
This project is a program of cooperative research and training at the Naval Research Laboratory for minority students of the Atlanta University Center. Six undergraduate students will be selected to spend two months working in the Center working on small research projects for the Bio/Molecular Engineering group of the Naval Research Laboratory. The program will first identify areas of research overlap between the cooperating institutions. The students chosen will work within these research areas, thus establishing a continuity of their summer research with that at their home institutions. The Atlantic University Center (AUC) comprises four undergraduate institutions (Morehouse, Spelman, Morris Brown Colleges, and Clark-Atlanta University) and the Clark-Atlanta graduate School and Morehouse School of Medicine. The AUC is the largest center for predominately black higher education in the country. The plan is for up to six students and two faculty members to spend 2 summer months working at the Naval Research Laboratories on projects of mutual interest to the two centers in the area of interfacial engineering. The major focus of research projects at NRL's Center for Bio/Molecular Science and Engineering is on the way in which biological molecules (particularly lipids) self-assemble into microstructures. Other projects will involve molecular modeling, non-linear optical properties of large organic molecules, polymeric ferroelectric liquid crystals, and fundamental studies of liquid biophysics. The NRL Center has wide experience with summer research projects for undergraduate students.
