Excitement builds as Clemson University prepares to open the Advanced Materials Innovation Complex

It is in these rooms that Dive and his colleagues will soon help shape the next generation of leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs in advanced materials.

For faculty and students, excitement to move into AMIC began to swell in the final weeks of the fall semester. They have been watching the four-story, 143,000-square-foot building rise from what used to be a parking lot over the past two years.

Nyx Mashkow, a senior in materials science and engineering, had a front-row view from the window of the lab where they work in Sirrine Hall, just across the sidewalk.

“It has been making me more and more excited to see what it is actually going to be like once it is up and functioning and we can move into the labs,” said Mashkow, who is a Goldwater Scholar. “It builds a sense of anticipation, seeing the new building go up and knowing what we have now.”

Faculty and students were planning to move into AMIC this month and start classes and research in the building after winter break.

AMIC, the University’s most technologically advanced facility, will centralize classes, labs and offices that are now scattered. Few are looking forward to the move more than Joshua Tong, a professor of materials science and engineering.

His work to develop new materials for fuel cells has been spread across six labs and two offices in three buildings on two campuses more than 15 minutes apart. In AMIC, all his operations will be consolidated on the fourth floor.

AMIC’s new labs stand in stark contrast to one of the Sirrine Hall labs where his students have been working amid tightly packed benchtops and shelves.

“When we have new equipment coming, we need to think about, where are we going to put it?” said Tianyi Zhou, a post-doctoral researcher. “With the dedicated space, we don’t have to worry about that anymore. We will have a large enough space for everybody to work.”

AMIC is also designed to spark new opportunities for collaboration among faculty and students from complementary disciplines.

The building will be the new home to the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, while also providing space for faculty and students in the related fields of chemistry and chemical and biomolecular engineering.

“Many of the materials-related folks will be in that building, allowing us to get together and have a coffee to talk about new ideas,” Tong said. “It is centralized to enhance materials-related work in depth. We will be able to work together on new proposals and research directions.”

Dive, a lecturer in materials science and engineering, said the undergraduate facilities will include a scanning-electron microscope. It is common for graduate-level researchers to use them but rare to have one available to undergraduates, he said.

Among the five undergraduate teaching labs on AMIC’s second floor is one that is dedicated to 3D-prototyping and will include metal and ceramic 3D printers.

“That whole lab itself is going to provide a great deal of hands-on experience about where the state-of-the-art manufacturing process is,” Dive said. “That will help students once they graduate and look for jobs in industry, especially with the growing automotive industry in the Greenville area.”

At the heart of the building is the drive to help create cutting-edge advanced materials and to build the industry’s next-generation workforce.

Advanced materials have properties that conventional materials lack. Some, for example, are lighter yet stronger than steel, while others are designed to make batteries last longer or to safely withstand the intense heat produced in power generation.

AMIC was built to support South Carolina’s expanding advanced materials industry. The state is home to about 960 advanced materials companies, and the industry accounted for 5,272 new jobs from 2017-23, according to the state Department of Commerce.

The building sits atop a hill with a partial view of Memorial Stadium and a short walk to many of the University’s engineering, computing and science facilities.

It is expected to help attract some of the best and brightest minds in advanced materials to Clemson. Among the new faculty who were enticed by the facility were Dive and Peter Maksymovych, a professor of materials science and engineering.

AMIC could also help address one of the perennial challenges in materials science and engineering at Clemson and elsewhere: raising awareness among young students and helping them understand what the field entails.

“As an undergrad, I had no idea what MSE was,” said Jacob Conrad, now a Ph.D. student in Tong’s lab. “I’d never heard of it before, but I think now students are going to see this building and think, wow, this is a real field I can go into. If I go into this, I can be in this new building and do impressive research.”

Kaitlin Petersen, a senior in materials science and engineering who is considering graduate school, said she liked the openness of the new building’s layout and that it had places for students to eat lunch or just chat.

“Sometimes you can be working in the lab, and it becomes mind numbing, and you just need interaction with somebody else,” Petersen said. “It is nice that you can just go around the corner and have a quick conversation, and then get back to what you’re doing.”

Kyle Brinkman, chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, said it is a transformational time for the department.

“AMIC brings together world-class facilities, outstanding faculty and bright, motivated students under one roof,” he said. “It is a catalyst for innovation and a launchpad for the next-generation workforce. When AMIC opens, it will mark the start of a new era for advanced materials for Clemson and beyond.”