A PARADIM Shift
- Sydney Reiser
- 13 hours ago
- 4 min read
Collaboration, not competition, drives the future of science. By uniting researchers around shared tools and ideas, PARADIM is accelerating materials research with the potential to address challenges from climate change to medicine.
An Introduction to Materials Science
Scientific collaboration has the capacity to bring about great change. We need to look no further than the race to discover a vaccine for Covid-19 during the recent pandemic. Scientists from all over the world and from a wide range of disciplines worked together to quickly create and distribute an effective and safe vaccine for the general population. Yet, many are quick to forget this lesson. There is a strong culture of competition pervasive among scientific disciplines which can lead to secrecy and reclusivity and hinder innovation and discovery.
One place trying to change the norm is the Platform for the Accelerated Realization, Analysis, and Discovery of Interface Materials (PARADIM). A program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and spearheaded by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University and Cornell University, PARADIM centers serve as central locations for materials instrumentation and scientific collaboration. PARADIM allows researchers to come together and share knowledge and savoir-faire in the context of materials science.
Image Credit: https://www.paradim.org/
The government launched PARADIM in hopes to propel itself as a global leader in materials science development as advancements in this field are intimately tied to environmental sustainability, energy efficiency and emerging electronics. The initial proposal was to offer 10 years of funding to create a collaborative equipment facility with national resources where scientists and technicians across disciplines could work together to advance materials research.
Education and Impact
Since its inception as a proposal-based system a decade ago, PARADIM has grown to offer robust educational programs and instrumentation training for its growing base of over 500 current users. In a recent conversation with Dr. Tyrel McQueen, co-director of PARADIM and the leader of Johns Hopkins University’s Bulk Crystal Growth facility, he described the program’s educational and professional impacts as “multifold.” McQueen highlighted both the technical and soft skills provided by PARADIM.
Through a summer school initiative that educates graduate students about the theories behind various instrumentations, PARADIM provides the next generation of scientists with hands-on experience that will better prepare them to advance in the field. Beyond such initiatives, PARADIM’s basic structure encourages active learning and teamwork; for example, instead of the typical model of users sending in their samples for analysis, they arrive at the facility to perform the analysis themselves, under the guidance of PARADIM staff. In addition to the program’s efforts to encourage personal growth, McQueen also highlighted the robust professional connections that it fosters. The collaborative nature of the platform enables researchers from across the country to meet at Hopkins and Cornell, where they can work together closely to gain insights into material.
Scientists study materials (e.g., metals, solids, ceramics, etc.) to answer questions about their structure, properties, synthesis, and application; this is known as materials science. It incorporates and utilizes various scientific disciplines, such as physics, chemistry and engineering and has been at the forefront of many recent technological advances. Discovering and understanding the properties of materials allows for their implementation into new technology, such as wearable sensors and higher capacity batteries. It has also found applications in biomedical imaging as well as drug delivery. For example, an orthopedic hip implant is specially designed to be biocompatible while simultaneously providing mechanical support and promoting integration with surrounding bone. The discovery of which metallic alloy is best suited for this purpose came about thanks to materials science.
As an inherently interdisciplinary subject, materials science benefits greatly from cross-communication between scientists. However, Dr. McQueen notes that there is a lack of opportunities for students to interact with people outside their discipline — a problem that PARADIM seeks to address. Describing the importance of such interactions, Dr. McQueen said, “many teams fail because they don’t have effective communication… companies today, it's not 3 to 5 people in a team, it's teams of 100.” By encouraging close technical and practical communication between users and staff, as well as leading communication workshops, PARADIM is bridging this gap. The communication and the introductions facilitated by PARADIM has provided and will continue to provide professional connections across areas of study; enabling experts to collaborate and share knowledge more effectively.
Interdisciplinary and inter-institutional science communication is paramount not only to the advancement of science, but also to the free and open dissemination of knowledge. This is what PARADIM is designed to promote: an open and collaborative use of its facilities. It achieves this by the aforementioned user centered style as well as its approach to proposal review. In order to work at a PARADIM facility, a research proposal is submitted through the website. These are then reviewed by independent experts. This process ensures that no one at PARADIM has direct control over the research being done, and inherent biases can’t interfere with the science.
Future Directions
The future of PARADIM is bright. The initial funding provided by the NSF for 10 years has been extended for at least another four, with additional sources of funding beginning to open up for the platform. McQueen explains that the operating model is transitioning from a proposal-based model to a hybrid one that incorporates options to pay for time and space. This, as he explains, is to maintain an "open, unbiased ecosystem” while ensuring future economic sustainability for the platform. Furthermore, PARADIM and its facilities have been acknowledged in 7 publications in 2026 alone.
PARADIM represents an example of how open, collaborative research can drive both scientific discovery and professional growth. From aiding in the fabrication of novel semiconductors to uniting researchers across disciplines and institutions, it has not only accelerated innovation in materials science but also strengthened communication and teamwork. Strong funding and creative scientific ideas will hopefully keep PARADIM running for years to come.
