AMSEC opens Materials Characterization Laboratory

April, 2006

WWU has opened an open-access, shared Materials Characterization Laboratory with resources available to the campus community, regional companies, and researchers from other universities. The facility is part of the Western’s Advanced Materials Science and Engineering Center (AMSEC), an interdisciplinary center to education students, promote research, and work with regional industry.

A ribbon cutting ceremony led by Western President Karen Morse and Board of Trustees members Kevin Raymond and Grace Yuan was held to inaugurate the opening of the laboratory. “It represents an opportunity for us to have strong technical partnerships that are going to serve not only the educational process we have at Western, but the community and state as well,” said President Karen Morse. “There’s only one other lab for undergraduates like itin the country. It’s a superb example of the quality of faculty and student research at Western.”

Western purchased the equipment for the facility with a $398,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. The new instruments are housed in the basement of the Communications Facility and include a vacuum evaporator system, a pair of instruments for performing thermal analyses, and an X-ray diffractometer.

According to Arlan Norman, Dean of the College of Sciences and Technology, “This new interdisciplinary center is important to our students and faculty because many of the most important problems faced by science and technology are at the boundaries of the classical disciplines.”

 

Inaugurating the new materials characterization laboratory. Left-to-right: Trustee Grace Yuan, Vice Provost Moheb Ghali, Chemistry Professor David Patrick, Trustee Kevin Raymond, Provost Andrew Bodman, President Karen Morse.