NASA’s Physical Sciences Research Program will fund 16 flight proposals for research to be conducted aboard the International Space Station (ISS) as part of the MaterialsLab program. Experiments in the various disciplines of physical science reveal how physical systems respond to the near absence of gravity. They also reveal how other forces that on Earth are small, as compared to gravity, can dominate system behavior in space.

MaterialsLab provides a platform to accelerate materials development and make new discoveries using data from the investigations performed aboard the orbiting laboratory. Awardees will explore a broad range of questions and gather data that will be available to the global community of researchers through the NASA Physical Sciences Informatics system. The MaterialsLab approach enhances the way researchers in government, industry and academia share information and promotes an open access approach to scientific data analysis and potentially guide hundreds of new, station-based scientific investigations. ...

Prof. Ulrike Wegst

... The selected proposals are from 14 institutions in nine states, with the total combined award amount of approximately $9.6M during a four-year period. These 16 investigations, involving recognized experts in materials science and related fields, will help define ISS investigations in order to advance fundamental research in the physical sciences. ...

MaterialsLab Investigation: Freeze-Casting

• Dr. David Dunand, Northwestern University, Evanston, "Microstructure Evolution in Freeze-Cast Materials"
• Prof. Ulrike Wegst, Dartmouth, "Structure-Property-Processing Correlations in Freeze-Cast Biomimetic Materials"

Freeze casting uses both the directional freezing of, generally, ceramic suspensions and the microstructure of ice to template the architecture of scaffolds, and thus can be used to create porous, layered materials. (Figure via Nature Materials)