Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Chemical Engineering 

NSF DMREF Project: A New Approach to Design of Polymer Morphology.
Advanced materials and their manufacture are essential to economic development, national security, and quality of life. MIT along with ExxonMobil is designing additives to produce lightweight polyolefins that are stiffer and tougher than those currently available and that benefit societal and economic requirements for energy and material conservation. This collaboration between academia and industry seeks to demonstrate a new paradigm for identifying essential relationships between molecular structure, morphology and performance, based on the close-knit and synergistic application of (i) molecular level simulation, (ii) experimental validation, (iii) materials design and optimization, and (iv) industrial applications.