The Cener for Advanced Materials was established in 1986 at the University of Houston as a NASA Commercial Center for the Development of Space to create advanced thin film materials and devices for commercial applications through vacuum growth technologies using both terrestrial and space environments.

Initially, as the Space Vacuum Epitaxy Center, NASA funding and UH support allowed SVEC to convert the top floor of Science and Research Building One into a 10,000 sq. ft. world-class clean room laboratory equipped with state-of-the-art vacuum and epitaxial growth facilities.

In 1989, SVEC secured additional funding from NASA and industry to undertake the development of the Wake Shield Facility (WSF), which was designed to demonstrate the viability and feasibility of using the ultra vacuum wake of an orbiting spacecraft to grow production quantities of uniquely pure thin film epitaxial semiconductor materials.

WSF-01 launched in February 1994, less than 5 years after program inception, and was delivered to orbit by the Space Shuttle three times in the following 3 years.  The unprecedented flight scheduled was only one of many space flight firsts for the WSF Program.  It made the first thin film materials in the vacuum of space, it helped to pave the way for advanced terrestrial thin film development and eventual space-based manufacturing, and it helped define a more cost effective way to design, engineer, and profitably operate facilities in the aerospace environment.  

The Wake Shield Facility is the only major Space Shuttle payload developed, managed, and operated by an academic institution of any size, and remains the single largest research project funding source in this University of Houston's history. 

Research data from the WSF program helped to enhance CAM laboratory R&D in thin film materials, and was instrumental in advancing a number of the thin film technologies undertaken at The Center.  The list of CAM-developed technologies is diverse, including more than 15 current applications that are being advanced in collaboration with a consortium of over 30 government, industry and academic affiliates, the UH College of Business Administration and the Bates College of Law.  Among them:

• Mid-Infrared semiconductor lasers for biological and chemical sensors
• Ultra-high efficiency solar cells for application to advanced satellites and space platforms
• One-chip integrated chemical sensors for environmental and medical applications including glucose monitoring
• Ceramic thin film optical micro-detectors for sight restoration (Bionic Eye)
• Electronically variable resistive memory, for use as non-volatile memory in computers
• High temperature second-generation superconducting wire
• Thin film solid oxide feul cells that operatate at lower temperatures and higher efficiencies
• High efficiency thermovotovotaics that directly convert heat into electricity

As part of this applied science and technology development, CAM has been awarded over two dozen US and international patents in the wake of the WSF Program, has signed 7 license agreements and has generated five local spin-off companies.
 
CAM has contributed additional intellectual capital in the form of hundreds of international presentations and refereed publications, and through the education of over 110 Ph.D., MS, BS, MBA and LLD students.

Garnering over $100-million dollars in direct funding, the Center has compounded its impact on the local economy though sustaining contractors, spin-off companies, and the creation of more than 100 high tech jobs, effectively adding hundreds of millions of dollars of economic benefit to Houston and the Southeast Texas region.

During a transitional period early in the new century, SVEC merged briefly with the Texas Center for Superconductivity, a long-time cross-campus collaborator, in order to leverage operational and management efficiencies as the Texas Center for Superconductivity and Advanced Materials.

In 2005, the original Center was re-established as the Center for Advanced Materials with a continuing commitment to basic research and education outreach, and a renewed focus on applications-based research and development.