The Center for Advanced Materials Manufacturing connects cutting-edge UT research with shared state-of-the-art facilities, federal laboratory partnerships, industry connections, and student training programs.
Introducing the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers
Faculty and students in the College of Arts and Sciences collaborate with interdisciplinary partners across the university within the Center for Advanced Materials Manufacturing (CAMM) to accelerate materials discovery for quantum technologies and extreme environments—creating new foundations for high-speed computing, next-generation power plants, and other future technologies.
As one of the National Science Foundation’s 20 Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers (MRSEC) across the country, CAMM stands out as a long-term, institutional anchor point in the college for artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum-driven research, providing a year-round framework for researchers and students to learn, network, and collaborate across disciplines.
“The combination we have here is extraordinary,” said CAMM Director Alan Tennant, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. “World-leading neutron science, supercomputing, AI, quantum materials expertise, and national laboratory partnerships all come together in one place to tackle scientific challenges that are beyond the reach of conventional computing approaches.”
CAMM is a vital component of UT’s K-Quantum initiative to accelerate quantum discovery, workforce development, and commercialization across Tennessee. In this highly collaborative research ecosystem, UT physicists, mathematicians, engineers, chemists, and computer scientists work together across disciplines and with colleagues at the Department of Energy’s Quantum Science Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)—one of only five National Quantum Information Science Research Centers in the country.
CAMM offers a unique community pipeline that is as much about building relationships as it is about producing research results.
“The biggest scientific challenges don’t fit neatly within departmental boundaries,” said Program Manager Amber White. “CAMM provides the environment and support for researchers to collaborate across those boundaries and to connect in ways that can lead to entirely new research questions and opportunities.”
Parallel Research Goals Expand Materials Progress
CAMM is organized into two interdisciplinary research groups that work together to advance materials development and discovery.
Group one focuses on applying AI to quantum magnetic materials and engineered quantum systems that support the rational design of materials with applications, developing AI-based tools to handle complex quantum phases and physical behavior.
“How we do science is changing, and we are bringing the latest advances in AI to some of those problems,” said Professor Adrian Del Maestro, lead for group one and head of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. “Automation, steering, and quantum experiments allow us to identify the fundamental problems that we can then engineer towards—with the ultimate goal of the design of materials and devices. I think that across the three years of the center so far, we have made some impressive discoveries, on the theory side and on the experimental side.”
Group two focuses on advancing next-generation alloys and ceramics—chemically complex materials intended to be used in very demanding, extreme conditions. Together, these groups leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to speed up the discovery and design of new high-performance materials.
“These are materials for tomorrow’s world,” said group two lead Professor Steve Zinkle, Governor’s Chair for Nuclear Materials. “We are poking and prodding these materials in all sorts of different ways to understand the stability of them—including extreme pressures or stresses, very high temperatures, irradiation, and high radiation collisional mixing. These have applications in hypersonic flight, fission and fusion energy, and a variety of other extreme conditions for the next decade and beyond.”
These research lanes complement each other to strengthen CAMM’s role in the college’s interdisciplinary research approach.
“In any given meeting, there is a chemist, an applied mathematician, a physicist, and so on,” said Del Maestro. “We bring our unique skill sets to solve problems that have some very challenging efforts—with the understanding that we are not experts across all disciplines, but by bringing together the right expertise, we can really make real fundamental progress on some of these problems.”
Students Make National Connection in Groundbreaking Research
Both undergraduate and graduate student researchers collaborate in tandem with faculty and colleague institutions through CAMM, creating a sustained research, innovation, and learning culture committed to the holistic student experience. The center prepares students—along with postdoctoral trainees, educators, and community partners—to engage with advanced materials research, manufacturing, and artificial intelligence-enabled discovery. Future employers will find CAMM students not only technically skilled, but experienced in working on multidisciplinary teams.
“A CAMM student does not have to exist solely within one research group,” said White. “They become part of a much larger community of mentors and collaborators.”
The latest collaborations and student research were on display in July 2026 when CAMM hosted the Tennessee Advanced Materials Summit (TEAMS). The summit gathered researchers, national lab partners, industry innovators, and policymakers to explore how AI, quantum technologies, and next-generation energy systems are transforming materials discovery and application. Along with hands-on workshops, interactive sessions, and strategic discussions, students presented their research through a poster session, experienced cross-sector networking, shared ideas, and participated in shaping the future of materials research.
“AI and quantum computing are really transforming the nature of our work extremely quickly,” said Tennant. “One of the things TEAMS aims to do, and what MRSEC does overall, is to provide a framework where researchers can get together, people can learn, network, and collaborate. Having MSREC as an anchor point really helps UT, helps our partners at ORNL, and provides a gateway for students and researchers to get together.”
by Randall Brown