Dr. David Veazie, director of the SPSU Center for Advanced Engineering Materials and Education (CAMRE) and a professor of mechanical engineering technology, has been awarded a grant of more than $455,000 by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in the 2011 Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) Competition.

SPSU and Georgia Tech were the only two Georgia institutions to receive the funding.
DURIP supports the purchase of state-of-the-art equipment that augments or improves the capabilities universities have to perform cutting-edge defense research. The Department of Defense received more than 800 proposals for the purchase of research instrumentation and awarded a total of $37.8 million to 83 academic institutions nationwide.

Dr. Veazie’s winning proposal made a case for the acquisition of a high-performance, thermal field emission scanning electron microscope (SEM) to observe, characterize and analyze advanced engineering materials.

“The acquisition of a thermal field emission SEM will lead to significant transformative materials research, design and fabrication,” he told DURIP officials. The SEM, he added, is “an indispensable tool for student research training in materials” that can be used by research groups based at SPSU and also at Clark Atlanta University, and will be central to CAMRE’s instrumentation capabilities.

“Students will utilize the SEM to acquire skills in multiple material-related disciplines, such as mechanical characterization, microfabrication, nanostructured and multifunctional materials, and material synthesis," he said.