NSF FMRG: Carbon-inverted manufacturing of inverted cements (CIMIC)

The objectives of this REU Supplement Request for the associated NSF grant are two-fold: (1) to further enhance the broader impacts of the NSF project by involving more undergraduate students, and (2) to provide professional and research training to undergraduate students in the knowledge base of future manufacturing and carbon-inverted cementitious materials. The REU Supplement fund will provide research opportunities to two undergraduate students who will work in a collaborative, multidisciplinary, cross-institution academic setting, although they will be mainly based at UMass Amherst.

The research to be conducted by the two undergraduate students will be experimental in nature, since experimental work is more intuitive and observational, has a shorter learning curve, and requires less advanced knowledge base, yet still provides sufficient fundamental training of science-oriented query and discovery. 

After the key proof-of-concept study focusing on one specific Ca/Mg-bearing silicate has been performed by the graduate students, who will also develop and validate the experimental protocols, the two REU students will follow the developed methodologies and use similar experimental procedures to expand the scope of the studied material/mineral systems. Specifically, the two REU students will focus on two different sub-topics that are extended from the graduate students’ successful development.