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Today—in communications, energy, new product design and production, the environment, health care, national security, transportation, space exploration—engineers face increasingly complex challenges and opportunities. A new perspective on engineering research is needed, one in which developing new collaborations between engineering disciplines is equal in importance to exploring the depths of each discipline. The Clark School has done much to foster this perspective, and with our new Kim Engineering Building we have created the perfect setting for achieving it.
We have anticipated the need for cross-disciplinary engineering research by establishing over many years a comprehensive research structure whose components organize our research efforts and make it easier for students and faculty, and for academic, business and government collaborators to understand the opportunities available and join with us. Components are:
- Individual departments, where faculty members, students and collaborators pursue new knowledge in their specialized areas (see sidebar).
- Engineering centers, some based in one department, some in multiple departments, in which groups of researchers and students focus on highly specific areas of work, often with strong ties to industry collaborators.
- Institutes, large organizations established by the university to promote a cross-disciplinary approach to broad areas of research, involving faculty and students from the Clark School and other university units as well as external research collaborators.
In an effort to produce more engineering researchers, the Clark School offers undergraduates both informal and formal research opportunities. Informal opportunities are those arranged with individual faculty members, typically through each department's director of undergraduate programs. Formal opportunities include an exceptional array of innovative undergraduate research programs such as A Scholars Program for Industry-oriented Research in Engineering (ASPIRE), Maryland Engineering Research Internship Teams (MERIT) and Research Internships in Science and Engineering (RISE).
Nowhere is the Clark School's cross-disciplinary approach to research more fully realized than in the new Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building. In this beautiful and advanced facility, adaptable state-of-the-art labs are shared across departments to encourage cross-disciplinary work, and both large conference facilities and small discussion areas foster the exchange of ideas with internal and external colleagues. Technologies include optoelectronics, nanotechnology, bioengineering, microelectronics and MEMS, sensors and actuators, transportation systems and space research. The building's 10,000-square foot clean room is a major resource for multiple research programs.
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