NSF Industrial/University Collaborative Research Centers (I/UCRC) are industry led research centers focusing on topics where enhancement of American capabilities can be found by bring together industrial research efforts targeting common technical or scientific challenges in an area that impacts an industrial sector.  The participating universities provide unique expertise, a common space for shared facilities, organizational needs of the center, sites for training, consulting and contract work.  One of the functions of the center is to fund joint research projects using membership dues.  Typically, projects are chosen by the industrial members in one biannual meeting and are assessed in a second meeting each year.  I/UCRCs are housed at one or more universities that must have a minimum of 6 paying members per site.  Other universities can participate in the center as contributing scientists.  These contributors can take projects from the center and their universities are required to use the same low overhead rates that are stipulated in the I/UCRC program.  There is flexibility for industrial participants to bring University participants to the center.  National Laboratories may participate either as center members or as research contributors.  It may be advantageous to have some type of scaled participation to encourage participation of small and startup companies in the center.  NSF provides a small amount of funding to support administration of the center, guarantees an extremely low overhead rate from the universities and reviews the operation of the center to maintain operational standards.  NSF also makes available supporting grants that can enhance the center such as international travel grants, IGERT grants for direct graduate student support, REU grants for support of undergraduate researchers and programs to support industrial researchers in visits to the universities as well as visits of academics to industrial sites and the like.  The I/UCRC can also serve as a springboard to an academic research center funded at a higher level by NSF, DOD, DOE or other government agencies.

The specifics of the center are decided by the industrial members in consultation with the faculty and administrators at the participating universities and with the NSF program managers.  So the first goal of the planning meeting is to frame the structure of the Center for Macromolecular Topology, to define the initial industrial, national lab and academic participants and to define the structure of membership (a tiered membership is possible).  At the planning meeting some possible projects will be presented and the industrial participants will meet to decide which of the proposed projects are of interest to the center and to suggest their own projects.   This framework will be presented to the NSF in a center proposal in March, 2012 with a decision expected in September, 2012.  The Center proposal can be modified and resubmitted if necessary.  The Center proposals have an 85% success rate at this stage of the process.  The main reason for rejection is that the universities have not provided sufficient evidence of industrial commitment to become members of the center.  Again, the NSF requires 6 full members per university site, so with two sites we require 12 paying members.  The membership fee is decided by the industrial members at the planning meeting.

The companies involved in the Center for Macromolecular Topology have interest in structure property relationships in macromolecules where chain topology (branching, crosslinking, dendrimeric structure, hyperbranching, network structure) are of commercial importance.  These industries include polyethylene and copolymers, gels, network polymers, elastomers and several other areas.  The center seeks to build at team of researchers in coordination with industrial scientists to address common issues related to characterization, simulation, synthesis, and modeling of structure property relationships in these materials.

In terms of the structure for this center, we have some insight from the Polymer IRC center in the UK (Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Durham) which has links to the CMT through Prof. Larson's participation in the British IRC and through common areas of interest.  The Polymer IRC is best known for simulation and modeling of Tom McLeish and the work of Daniel Read in rheology.  The two centers are complimentary with unique expertise at the CMT in the use of scattering to quantify macromolecular topology, the coupling of macromolecular simulations to predict rheology and synthetic capabilities in the CMT.  The CMT could be used to access NSF international travel funds for industrial and academic members to interact with the Polymer IRC in the UK and with other collaborative centers in Europe and Asia.

In addition to determining organizational aspects of the center the planning meeting can be used to assess the need for centralized equipment that may be of general use to participants in the center.  The advantage of centralized facilities lies in cost reduction, space savings and staffing reductions.  For example members of the center interested in polyethylene and copolymers might be interested in pooling resources to support a TREF fractionation facility.   Other centralized facilities can be discussed at the planning meeting. 

The need for centralize training in rheology, analytic techniques, synthesis, modeling and simulation can be assessed at the planning meeting.  A framework for the center in this respect may be an outcome of the planning meeting discussions.  The use of Net Meeting, PolyCom and Skype may be of use in this context. 

Participants in the planning meeting can also discuss with national lab participants the special role of NIST, ORNL, Sandia and AFRL in the center.  The CMT already has a working relationship with a parallel center at NIST, nSoft Consortium, as well as with the Center for Nanoscale Materials Science and the SNS/HFIR scattering centers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  The center also has long-term relationships with the Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, Argonne National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory.