Research Centers & Facilities

Within the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, there are 6 creep frames and one state-of-the-art thermomechanical testing machine capable of performing experiments at temperatures up to 1200 C and loads up to 10kN in vacuum (10-8 torr), inert gas, or air environments. The facilities are available to researchers from across campus and from outside the MSU community.

The Center for Microbial Ecology was founded in 1989 by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as one of the first eleven Science and Technology Centers in the nation. The Center has major programs in Research, Graduate Education, Industrial Outreach, and Educational Outreach designed to create new knowledge, facilitate the dissemination of knowledge to the industrial and governmental sectors, help to develop a well-trained work force knowledgeable in microbial ecology, and increase scientific literacy among K-12 students.

Our missioin is to develop nanostructured, biomimetic-interface architectures that express membrane-protein activities and can be used to produce high-value devices and processes.

The Composite Materials and Structures Center is a multdisciplinary research facility located at Michigan State University's College of Engineering. The expertise of MSU's engineering research faculty, as well as faculty from other colleges on campus, support the center's three major efforts of: research on composite materials and design; support of graduate and undergraduate work on composites; and the transfer of composites technology.

Composite materials are a new class of materials that combine two or more separate components into a form suitable for structural applications.  While each component retains its identity, the new composite material displays macroscopic properties superior to its parent constituents, particularly in terms of mechanical properties and economic value.

A center of excellence for the design and testing of composite structures for light-weight, environment-friendly, durable and safe vehicles

The Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science maintains a wide scope of analytical characterization instruments and expertise to support research. Our facilities are available to researchers from across campus and from outside the MSU community.

Michigan State University's full time and lifelong learning students are trained in this newly designed modern facility and benefit from having developed exceptional experimental research skills. The Automotive Research Experiment Station provides these students with the distinctive opportunity to be involved in multidisciplinary research and characteristics of the nature of work within the automobile industry.

The Engineering Machine Shop and Industrial Project Lab (IPL) are full services shops that provide the students with the needed tools and equipment to design and manufacture projects.

Locations:

Michigan State University (MSU) and Fraunhofer Gesellschaft (FhG) formed a mutually beneficial research partnership to establish the Fraunhofer Center for Coatings and Laser Applications (CCL) in 2003, a Center of Excellence in coating and laser processing technologies. The partnership was based on complementary expertise in the areas of conventional coatings, carbon-based coatings, microwave plasma processing and laser processing.

The HPCC was established in 2005 to facilitate discovery by students, faculty, and staff at MSU through the use of high performance computing. The HPCC mission is to provide high quality, high performance computing services to the research community at MSU.

The Pavement Research Center of Excellence, established in 1995, conducts research and technology transfer in the transportation infrastructure areas. Researchers study the effects of conventional pavement materials, polymers, composite materials, design, construction quality, preventive maintenance and rehabilitation practices on pavement performance under traffic load and environmental conditions.

The Midwest Hazardous Substance Research Center (MHSRC) is one of five regional hazardous substance research centers in the United States. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) established the centers in 1989 to encourage the development of better and safer methods for assessment and clean up of hazardous substances. Each center has both research and outreach components - researchers develop new cleanup technologies and outreach staff provide technical asistance to communities affected by hazardous substances.

The Center of Excellence for Great Lakes and Human Health (CEGLHH) focuses on understanding the inter-relationships between the Great Lakes ecosystem, water quality and human health.

The NDE research group, one of the largest and most active in the country, has a long and sustained record of being at the forefront in developing novel electromagnetic and acoustic NDE technologies for both the defense and civilian sectors.

In 2000, the University of Michigan joined with Michigan State University and Michigan Technological University to form the Engineering Research Center for Wireless Integrated MicroSystems (WIMS ERC).

The Protein Expression Laboratory (PEL) at Michigan State University was established with funding by the Michigan Life Sciences Corridor to assist scientists with non-GMP production of recombinant proteins using microbial expression systems. The PEL provides a set of services including gene cloning, computer-controlled fermentations, fermentation optimization and scale-up, cell lysis, protein assay, protein purification and final product freeze drying.

This initiative focuses on developing innovative quantitative experimental and modeling approaches to understand evolutionary processes, structure/function relationships in biomolecules, and biological networks of molecules and populations.

Located in the MBI Building on 3900 Collins Road in Lansing, Michigan, the MSU Research Center for Power Electronics focuses on advanced R&D on power conversion technology and motor control for renewable energy, utility and transportation applications.