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James Tarpo Jr. and Margaret Tarpo
Department of Chemistry

Chemical measurement science research awarded additional NSF funding

2024-07-28

Writer(s): Steve Scherer

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) has renewed $5 million in funding for the Center for Bioanalytic Metrology (CBM), an NSF center supporting fundamental research in chemical measurement science at Purdue University, Indiana University, and the University of Notre Dame.

“With the Phase II renewal, we have five more years of NSF funding to complement the industry-sponsored research dollars that have supported 25 projects just at Purdue, with principal investigators across the College of Science, College of Engineering, and the College of Pharmacy,” said Garth Simpson, who is a professor in the James Tarpo Jr. and Margaret Tarpo Department of Chemistry and the CBM Purdue site director.

Measurement science, and associated instrumentation, is a multi-billion-dollar industry and a key contributor to the U.S. economy, enabling advances in everything from drug discovery to materials manufacturing. Purdue has a long-standing #1 national ranking in analytical chemistry (U.S. News and World Report), which supports chemical measurement science and instrumentation development aligned with the center mission.    

Simpson says research themes have included:

  • Enabling research technologies
  • Chemical imaging
  • Artificial intelligence/machine learning and instrument automation
  • Point of use technologies
  • Overcoming performance limits

“Since its launch in 2020, the CBM has contributed to 49 scientific publications with an H-index of 12, with the large majority of those published within the last three years. We currently have 13 dues-paying industry partners, spanning pharmaceutical, agricultural, and energy sectors,” Simpson added.

In addition to Simpson, the center is led by Stephen C. Jacobson, the Dorothy and Edward Bair Chair and CBM site director at Indiana University, and Paul W. Bohn, the Arthur J. Schmitt Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and CBM center director and site director at the University of Notre Dame. Collaboration between Purdue, Indiana University, and Notre Dame through the Indiana Consortium for Analytical Science and Engineering (ICASE) leverages the considerable regional strength in our state in chemical measurement science.

According to the NSF, the awards are co-funded by the Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers (I/UCRC) Program in the Division of Engineering Education and Centers - in the Directorate for Engineering, and the Chemical Measurement and Imaging (CMI) Program in the Division of Chemistry, Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences.