This summer, a partnership between North Carolina Agricultural and Technical (A&T) State University and the University of California San Diego (UCSD) brought together students and researchers for a hands-on exchange that blended science, mentorship, and collaboration.

The visit, part of the NSF PREM (Partnerships for Research and Education in Materials) program, allowed 12 A&T students to spend several weeks conducting research at UCSD through the university’s Research Immersion in Materials Science and Engineering or RIMSE summer initiative, led by Andrea Tao, UCSD professor and Co-PI on the PREM project, Collaborative Research and Education in Advanced Materials (CREAM).

Funded by the UCSD MRSEC and the University of California system, RIMSE was originally set to support just a handful of participants. “It was supposed to fund seven or eight students,” says Dhananjay Kumar, A&T professor and PI on the CREAM award. “But a lot of students from A&T applied … and everybody who applied got in.” The program offered not only hands-on laboratory experience but also exposure to graduate-level research environments and faculty mentorship.

“The RIMSE program has been gaining in popularity with both our trainees and our faculty,” says Tao. The combination of the PREM grant and support from the University of California’s Office of the President allowed us to expand the reach of our RIMSE program substantially, to where it now engages more than 80 students each year, as mentors or as mentees.”

Students who later pursue graduate study within the UC system are eligible for full tuition and stipend support.

Hands-On Opportunities

The collaboration between A&T and UCSD builds on shared research strengths across three main areas: plasmonic materials, biomaterials, and two-dimensional chalcogenides. While A&T spearheads the advanced materials synthesis and characterization research, UCSD brings expertise in biomaterials and optical measurements. What’s more, joint supervision of graduate students and co-authored publications are extending the partnership’s reach.

“Collaboration brings best of the two,” says Kumar. “It’s a very strong partnership—student exchange, faculty exchange, and shared research.”

During the visit, students worked alongside UCSD faculty including Michael Sailor, co-PI on the PREM award and MRSEC director at UCSD. “The university provided access to some of the teaching labs that were equipped for high-level materials research,” says Sailor. “These labs were just sitting idle during the summer, and so they provided space for the trainees to prepare their samples and perform their experiments. That really allowed us to scale RIMSE to accommodate a much larger cohort.”

Sailor also noted that the immersive nature of the RIMSE program meant that the students were in the labs for almost the entire day, five days a week, rather than for just six or eight hours as is typical of an academic-year teaching lab.

“One of the signature elements of our RIMSE program is the ‘mentees become mentors’ model,” says Tao. By engaging trainees over multiple summers and into the academic year, RIMSE matures the trainees into a mentor role, allowing organizers to manage the larger cohort safely and effectively. It also provides a longer-term and more impactful engagement with the trainees.

Ongoing Collaboration

The collaboration extends beyond the lab. Faculty from both institutions continue to meet to sustain the student pipeline and co-develop projects. “We had a meeting of all the students who did research in the summer,” Kumar says. “We don’t want to lose them.” Several participants are now continuing their research at A&T under PREM support this semester, with plans to bring some of them back to UCSD in the summer of 2026 as mentors.

The A&T-UCSD partnership exemplifies PREM’s broader mission: connecting research excellence with opportunity. By merging complementary expertise, the collaboration not only advances materials science but also creates lasting pathways for students to enter graduate study and research careers. As Kumar put it, “We have to keep working—research is our battleground.”