Lian Yu, professor in the Pharmaceutical Sciences Division, and collaborators in chemistry, chemical engineering and Abbott Laboratories, as an industrial partner, received funding from the National Science Foundation for a Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) award.

In this collaborative project, the team of academic and industrial researchers will seek to understand the crystallization of organic glasses. A glass is a liquid that is too cold to flow. For many applications, glasses (also called amorphous solids) are preferred over crystals. The team will study the activation of new, fast modes of crystal growth as a liquid becomes a glass and the control of these new modes in developing amorphous materials. The results of this research will benefit scientists in a range of fields where crystal growth is important; for example, amorphous pharmaceuticals and organic electronics.