Centers and Institutes

The Department of Physics is the home of three important research centers and one institute. Please click on the links below to learn more.

The Center for Emergent Material (CEM) is an NSF funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC).

The CEM, a National Science Foundation (NSF) supported Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC), performs integrated research on emergent materials and phenomena in magnetoelectronics, creating new paradigms in computing and information storage. The research activities conducted at the CEM focus on a new understanding of electron-spin injection and transport, and the synthesis and exploitation of multifunctional properties of innovative double perovskite heterostructures. The CEM also has an active Seed Funding program, aimed at supporting new ideas with the potential for transformative impact on science and technology.

Education is an important component of our research activities. Our programs take an interactive, constructionist approach to address the nature and cognitive cause of the misconception of materials science concepts. Other activities include developing high-school materials science courses, training teachers, providing research opportunities to undergraduates, and K-12 outreach.

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The Center for Exploration of Novel Complex Materials (ENCOMM) is a University funded Initiative that builds on the broad strength at OSU in electronic, magnetic and organic materials to address cutting edge challenges in understanding and developing complex multicomponent materials. These problems are inherently multidisciplinary and require state-of-the-art facilities. ENCOMM's mission is to create the environment in which these teams can form and interact, and to provide the infrastructure needed to perform the research that will define this field.

The ENCOMM NanoSystems Laboratory (ENSL) is a research facility, open to all researchers, located in the Physics Research Building. Our goal is to provide academic and industrial researchers with access to advanced material characterization and fabrication tools for research and development applications. Research capabilities available at ENSL include focused ion beam/scanning electron microscopy, e-beam lithography, nanomanipulation, EDS X-ray microanalysis, X-ray diffractometry, SQUID magnetometry, atomic force/magnetic force microscopy, low temperature magnetotransport measurements, Magneto-optical Kerr Microscopy, Thin Film Deposition, and Langmuir-Blodgett trough monolayer deposition. ENSL is supported by the Center for Electronic & Magnetic Nanoscale Composite Multifunctional Materials (ENCOMM), Center for Emergent Materials (CEM), Institute for Materials Research (IMR) and the Department of Physics.

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The Ohio State University has funded an Initiative to develop a Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics (CCAPP), building on the unique environment between the OSU Departments of Astronomy and Physics, to pursue research at the interface of cosmology, astrophysics, and high energy physics. Our primary objective is to create a world-leading interdisciplinary research center focused on the fundamental questions "What is the Universe made of?" and "How did it evolve?". The CCAPP will focus the relevant expertise (existing and new faculty, postdocs, technical and administrative staff, and graduate students) and research programs from both Astronomy and Physics on these fundamental questions. CCAPP research initiatives include dark energy (DES-LSST-SNAP), "multi-messenger" astro-particle physics (GLAST,AUGER,ANITA), dark matter, and the birth and growth of the Universe.

INstitute for Optical Science

The Ohio State University Institute for Optical Science aims to be a world leader in the development of basic spectroscopy and its application to a variety of problems ranging from engineering to environmental to biological to astrophysical. The faculty at The Ohio State University is recognized as leaders in the development of basic optical methods and the analysis and understanding of atomic,   molecular and condensed phase processes.