Alan Liby, former director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Advanced Manufacturing Program, has been appointed director of the University of Tennessee’s Joint Institute for Advanced Materials (JIAM). Located at UT’s Research Park at Cherokee Farm, JIAM is a partnership between UT and ORNL. His tenure began on August 19.

“The University of Tennessee is a leading authority in advanced materials and manufacturing,” said Robert Nobles, interim vice chancellor for research. “By leveraging the joint institute’s resources and expertise, Liby will help elevate the visibility of this program beyond its current scope.”

A small group of leaders and experts in advanced materials and manufacturing will convene at an upcoming meeting to discuss the future direction and vision for the UT/ORNL Joint Institute of Advanced Materials (JIAM). During this meeting JIAM’s current focus areas (functional materials, soft materials, structural materials) will be discussed, as well as new or emerging areas of focus.

As a researcher working in advanced materials and manufacturing, we are inviting you to provide information on existing, new, or emerging focus areas. Your suggestions will help shape the vision for JIAM.

Turning research into real-world solutions with market value is the focus of an intensive, three-week workshop that kicked off today at the University of Tennessee’s Cherokee Farm.

Chancellor Beverly Davenport speaks during the opening session of the I-Corps South event at the Cherokee Farm, Joint Institute for Advanced Manufacturing (JIAM) Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017.

UT Knoxville is hosting the event for the first time after joining the National Science Foundation-funded “Innovation Corps” program in June. For some participants with start-up ideas, there’s a potential prize, too. NSF-funded grants of $50,000 are possible for participants whose ideas and plans for turning them into reality are deemed promising enough to win the cash to pilot them.

Scientists and engineers representing Georgia Tech, Louisiana State University and Tennessee Tech University are hearing from experts on thinking through and launching a startup. Participants will then conduct 20 customer discovery phone interviews to test their ideas with customers for evaluation.

The lineup kicked off with a welcome from UT Knoxville Chancellor Beverly Davenport.

“I’d like to spend every day welcoming innovators, inventors and entrepreneurs who are thinking about tomorrow and what kinds of needs can be met and what kinds of jobs are going to be created,” Davenport said. “There’s no better incentive than a need, a problem, around which to develop a solution. I’m excited that the University of Tennessee is bringing people together to think in terms of the end user, the applications and what use they might be.”