CSUN physics professor Gang Lu.

Despite improvement over the years, science is a field in which minorities remain significantly underrepresented. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is working to change that and has selected CSUN as a key partner in those efforts.

The NSF program Partnerships for Research and Education in Materials (PREM) seeks to broaden participation of underrepresented minorities and enhance diversity in materials research and education.

In 2012, Cal State Northridge received its second PREM grant, designed to stimulate the development of formal, long-term, collaborative research and education partnerships between minority-serving colleges and universities such as CSUN and the NSF’s Division of Materials Research-supported centers, institutes and facilities such as Princeton University. The first grant, in 2006, launched a partnership with Princeton that will now be continued.

“The latest grant helps us maintain long-term collaboration with our colleagues at Princeton that gives our students a rare opportunity to do cutting-edge research with faculty here at CSUN and at Princeton,” said Northridge physics professor Gang Lu, director of the PREM Center in CSUN’s College of Science and Mathematics.

Highlights of the PREM grant, according to Lu, include financial support for outreach to local high school students and teachers; stipends for CSUN undergraduate students that allow them to concentrate on their studies and research; and funding for students’ travel to Princeton during the summer to work with faculty there.

Students with this kind of research training, said Lu, “could have a significant advantage of being admitted to top graduate schools such as Princeton.”

For more: CSUN Physics Faculty Receive $2 Million NSF Grant to Encourage Diversity in Scientific Research, Education [CSUN Media Releases]

College of Science and Mathematics, Grants