TANMS Celebrated as a Graduating ERC at the 2022 NSF ERC Biennial Meeting

On September 20-21, 2022, over 200 attendees representing the leadership and personnel of the National Science Foundation and the NSF Engineering Research Centers (ERC) nationwide participated in the NSF ERC Biennial Meeting in Arlington, Virginia.  Now entering its 11th year, TANMS celebrated it's graduation with 6 other ERCs that were founded in 2011 and 2012.  

A special graduation awards ceremony was held on the evening of September 21 to recognize the achievements of the 7 graduating ERCs.  Congratulatory video messages from the NSF Director, Honorable Sethuraman Panchanathan, and congressional representatives of each ERC's lead institution, were shared.  Promotional videos produced by each graduating ERC summarizing each center's achievements were presented to the congressional representatives prior to the meeting and also shared with the event attendees during the awards ceremony.  

As part of the two-day event, NSF hosted the Lynn Preston Perfect Pitch Competition where graduate students representing each of the active ERCs are asked to deliver a 90-second pitch to answer the following questions: (1) what real-life problem their research addressed, (2) how they solved it in a unique way, and (3) what impact it would have for society and in achieving their Center’s mission?  Jesse Rivera, TANMS Doctoral Fellow from the UCLA Active Materials Lab, won the TANMS internal competition and represented TANMS at the national competition.  Although Jesse was not selected as one of the finalists at the national competition, he did a wonderful job at delivering his pitch on "Healing Broken Hearts with Multiferroic Antennas" .