Materials science and engineering is a naturally multidisciplinary field. Our researchers are involved in a breadth of innovation through the following centers and institutes.

Michigan Materials Research Institute (MMRI)
MMRI is the catalyst to build a community amongst the materials researchers across the university, to create a portal for government and companies to identify key capabilities, to enable the sharing of research equipment and to prioritize critical gaps, and to enable the awarding of large materials research grants. MMRI has the vision to be the foundation that catalyzes the formation of multiple multi-million-dollar research centers, major instrumentation and infrastructure sponsored by federal agencies and industry, leading to Michigan’s reputation as the best university in the U.S. for engineered materials research.  

Biointerfaces Institute
The future of biomedical research requires not only innovative science and technology, but a reinventing of the research process itself. This vision of a new academic research blueprint emphasizing interdisciplinary efforts at the interface between life sciences, physical sciences and engineering is the compelling reason that the University of Michigan created the Biointerfaces Institute in 2012. 

Center for Materials Innovation at Michigan
The Center for Materials Innovation at Michigan is an NSF-funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at the University of Michigan that establishes a transformative campus-wide eco-system to accelerate the design, discovery, and deployment of novel materials critical for the Industries of Tomorrow, including advanced manufacturing, clean energy/sustainability, artificial intelligence, and future semiconductors. Embedded in the eco-system is a long-term partnership between UM researchers and collaborators from industry, academia, and national laboratories. Building upon the principles of the Materials Genome Initiative, the interdisciplinary research groups combine computational, statistical, theoretical, and experimental approaches to examine processing-structure-property relationships in novel semiconductor heterostructures for advanced quantum information processing and reconfigurable polymers that are environmentally sustainable. The Center structure emphasizes the integration of research and education, with an emphasis on attracting/retaining the next generation of materials researchers: a diverse body of researchers reflecting society at large. To build and maintain the campus-wide ecosystem, the Center works to engage all materials researchers through a suite of activities aimed at broadening participation and enhancing knowledge transfer. The Center is positioned to respond to emerging opportunities through its "Seed" projects. 

Lightweight Innovations for Tomorrow (LIFT)
LIFT is a multi-university, industry/government sponsored Institute developing advanced manufacturing processes for lightweight metallic components for transportation applications. The Institute is a non-profit company headquartered in Michigan with the University of Michigan as one of its founding members.

(MC)2 = Materials Characterization & State-of-the-art Microscopy
The Michigan Center for Materials Characterization, or (MC)2, is the new College of Engineering’s (CoE’s) shared microscopy and characterization facility. (MC)2 houses state-of-the-art equipment, including aberration corrected transmission electron microscopes, dual beam focused ion beam / scanning electron microscopes, an x-ray photo-electron spectrometer, a tribo-indenter, an atomic force microscope, and an atom probe tomography instrument.

Predictive Integrated Structural Materials Science Center (PRISMS)
Combining the efforts of computational and experimental researchers, the goal of this center is development of an integrated suite of validated computational tools that are designed to accelerate the development of new structural metals.