UTC establishes Nanoengineering Center to expand research impact

Dr. Murat Barisik, associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, stands in his campus office.

Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Murat Barisik will serve as the director of the Nanoengineering Center. Photo by Angela Foster.

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga has announced the launch of the Nanoengineering Center, a new research center housed within the UTC Research Institute.

The center, which began as a Center for Excellence in Applied Computational Science and Engineering (CEACSE) Convergent Research Initiative, has now graduated to standalone status after meeting key milestones in research growth, collaboration and external funding.

The Nanoengineering Center is the third center under the UTC Research Institute and builds on multidisciplinary work advancing nano-enabled solutions in energy, health and defense.

Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Murat Barisik will serve as the center’s director.

“As we continue elevating UTC’s research enterprise, the launch of the Nanoengineering Center represents an important step forward,” UTC Chancellor Lori Bruce said. “This center brings together faculty expertise across disciplines, strengthens our partnerships with national laboratories and industry and expands opportunities for students to engage in high-level research.

“The creation of the Nanoengineering Center supports UTC’s continued growth as a research institution and our trajectory toward Carnegie R2 classification.”

Interim Vice Chancellor for Research Mina Sartipi, who serves as executive director of the UTC Research Institute, said the decision to elevate the initiative followed clear benchmarks in research productivity, faculty engagement and external support.

“When we launched the CEACSE Convergent Research Initiative, we defined clear criteria for success,” Sartipi said. “The goal was to engage faculty from multiple departments and colleges, build relationships with industry, other universities and national laboratories, involve Ph.D. students and secure external funding. Under Dr. Murat Barisik’s leadership, the team has successfully met those milestones.”

Sartipi said the initiative demonstrated sustained growth in faculty participation, sponsored funding and national collaborations, making it ready to operate as a standalone center under the UTC Research Institute.

“One of the goals for our centers is to build momentum and bring more people in,” she said. “With formal center status, they can pursue additional funding opportunities with a stronger position because they have already been recognized as a research center.”

Barisik, who joined the UTC faculty in 2022, was the principal investigator for the FY2025-2028 CEACSE Convergent Research Initiative project, which focused on advancing UTC’s research in nanotechnology through computational modeling, material design and machine learning.

That initiative brought together faculty from multiple departments to develop advanced nanomaterials for applications such as energy storage, biodegradable materials and thermal protection systems. As collaborations, student involvement and externally supported projects expanded, the effort evolved into a shared research platform spanning advanced materials, manufacturing and energy.

Formal center status allows the team to scale partnerships, expand student training and accelerate multi-investigator research efforts. The center integrates AI-guided multiscale modeling to translate fundamental mechanisms into predictive, engineering-ready performance.

“Our focus is straightforward: connect nanoscale understanding to solutions for high-impact national needs,” Barisik said. “We want to make it easier to translate fundamental insights into real-world impact.

“Convergence isn’t a buzzword for us; it’s the workflow. The problems we’re tackling don’t fit in one department, so the center is built to make cross-disciplinary work the default.”

Beyond research growth and external funding, Barisik pointed to the center’s academic and workforce role.

“One of the most important outcomes is what this means for students,” he said. “A center gives us a stable home for training, where students can work across disciplines and learn how nanoscale science translates into real-world solutions. I think of it as preparing students for where technology is headed; nano-enabled technologies are becoming part of the mainstream, and we want our students to be familiar with them and confident working with them.

“For several years, we’ve been building nanotechnology awareness through hands-on educational activities that introduce students from K–12 through graduate levels and the broader community to nanoscale science and its real-world impact.”

The center will continue collaborations with partners that include the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and industry stakeholders, with additional proposals in development.