Akram Boukai, Jinsang Kim, Manos Kioupakis and Brian Love are leading projects in the innovated MCubed program. MCubed is a two-year seed-funding program designed to empower interdisciplinary teams of University of Michigan faculty to pursue new initiatives with major societal impact.

The MSE-related projects are:

Characterizing the efficacy of corneal crosslinking (CXL) therapy - MSE faculty is Brian Love
Novel Dark Matter Detectors Using Molecular Biology and Nanotechnology - MSE faculty is Rachel Goldman
Structure-Property Relationships of Novel Oxides for Li-Ion Batteries - MSE faculty are Manos Kioupakis and Xiaoqing Pan
Thin Nanostructured Silicon Solar Cells Using Optical Confinement - MSE faculty are Akram Boukai and Anish Tuteja

Conjugated Polymers with Directed Alignment Property for Organic Photovoltaic Cell Application - MSE faculty are Jinsang Kim and Peter Green

Mcubed minimizes the time between idea conception and successful research results by providing immediate startup funds for novel, high-risk and transformative research projects. The funds are intended to generate data for groundbreaking, high-impact publications, or preliminary results for new, innovative research proposals. The program also includes high-visibility, campus-wide research symposia to showcase the resulting groundbreaking research.

MCubed characteristics are:

• Multidisciplinary – Taking advantage of UM’s excellence across breadth.
• Collaborative – Three researchers from at least two different units.
• Unreviewed – No formal review; peers approve by agreeing to “cube.”
• Bold – Drives risk-taking in innovative and interdisciplinary research.
• Exciting – High-profile, campus-wide symposia to present results.
• Distributed – Funding from PIs, units, Provost, and Rackham.

More information on the MCubed program at http://mcubed.umich.edu