News

PREM Day brought students and faculty from Texas State, UT Austin, NAU, and Pasadena City College together for lab tours, research exchange, career conversations, and connections across the PREM community.

The Texas State PREM Center for Intelligent Materials Assembly (CIMA) hosted students from regional elementary, middle and high schools in several STEM tours to our campus.

The National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored Partnerships for Research and Education in Materials (PREM) fosters long-term collaborations between universities and NSF’s Division of Materials Research (DMR)-supported centers. It enhances research opportunities through faculty and student exchanges, student mentoring and professional development.

This work introduces a hybrid molecular photoswitch that combines tetra-ortho-fluoroazobenzene (TFA) with spiropyran (SP) to overcome one of the principal limitations of fluorinated azobenzene photoswitches: their intrinsically slow thermal Z → E isomerization. The work demonstrates that transient formation of a phenolate intermediate, generated through the spiropyran–merocyanine (SP⇌MC) equilibrium, dramatically accelerates relaxation of the metastable Z isomer.

On Tuesday, May 26, PREM CIMA welcomed 51 eighth- and ninth-grade students from CAST Med High School to Texas State University for a day of hands-on STEM exploration and college pathway learning.

One of the most useful and successful activities for the student in PEAQS has been working one-on-one with PEAQS staff on their career preparation. To create a sustainable version of this, Dr. Schreiner developed an on-demand online training platform for PEAQS students.

To better study diseases, scientists are turning to organ-on-a-chip models that allow them to create multiple bio-accurate disease models without needing animal or human subjects. FLC undergraduates Sally Thompson, Hunter Goggin, Natalia Lambos from the Jessing group at FLC have been working to create a lung-on-a-chip platform for this purpose.

Wayant Billey, a Navajo student at Navajo Technical University, knows firsthand how important water quality is for families who haul water for drinking, livestock and crops. His research uses small, low-cost laser-induced graphene sensors to detect heavy metals in water — work that could help communities better understand local contamination risks while inspiring the next generation of STEM students.

This month, the PREM CIMA community led two outreach events aimed at bringing STEM learning to children and families across San Marcos.

Students moved from room to room inside Gardiner Hall, stopping to test experiments, ask questions, and watch demonstrations during New Mexico State University’s Physics Fun Day. Held Friday, March 27, the event turned abstract concepts into something tangible.