Dr. Jim Smay receives NSF CAREER Award
 

Assistant Professor, Jim Smay, in the School of Chemical Engineering at Oklahoma State University has received the prestigious CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).  This award recognizes select assistant professors nationwide who compete for the award by proposing integrated research and education programs to launch their careers as academic leaders.  Dr. Smay's proposal was reviewed by the NSF's Division of Manufacturing and Industrial Innovation (DMII) under the Directorate for Engineering.  In addition to the honor of the award, research funding in the amount of $400,000 will be provided by the NSF to perform the proposed research.

 

Jim's proposed area of research will enable next generation manufacturing of multi-material assemblies that could have applications ranging from multi-layer ceramic packages and circuit designs to new tissue engineering scaffolds.  His research group focuses on the processing and assembly of colloidal materials, small particles of metal, ceramic, or polymer suspended in water, and tailoring of their flow properties in a direct write manufacturing process.  Direct writing is common place, as nearly everyone has used an inkjet printer; however, Dr. Smay is extending the idea of printing directly from computer instructions to three dimensions to produce functional devices from various engineering materials.  Unlike the highly fluid inks used to print color pictures, the colloidal pastes utilized in his process are able to be extruded from nozzles the size of a human hair and deposited on a substrate where they maintain their shape to build up structures one layer at a time.

 

Dr. Smay's previous work in this area resulted in a 2003 cover article in the scientific journal Langmuir, published by the American Chemical Society (ACS).  Jim was also awarded the Victor K. LaMer award for the most outstanding PhD thesis in the nation by the ACS in the area of colloids and surface science. 

 

Dr. Smay's integrated research and education plan draws on the highly visual nature of the direct write process to peak the interest of high school and undergraduates students to become in research at an early stage.  Dr. Smay has already advised two Wentz research scholars from the School of Chemical Engineering and regularly invites undergraduates to perform experiments in his labs.  Jim has planned a joint program with a Cherokee Nation administered high school to showcase the direct write process to Native American high school students and to foster a mentoring relationship that may draw underserved minorities into mathematics, science, and technology fields.  "Research has shown that early scientific socialization and mentoring is one of the most critical components to encourage minorities to pursue scientific based careers.  Being part Cherokee myself, and having been raised in northeastern Oklahoma, I have a strong desire to contribute to the development and preparation of young Native Americans for productive careers in technological fields" says Dr. Smay.