 MIRTHE provides an interdisciplinary and practice-oriented education for a competitive and diverse U.S. workforce and seeks to educate the public about chemical sensing applied to applications in environment, homeland security, and health.It was proposed and is currently headed by Dr. Claire Gmachl of Princeton University.She envisions it to become a center of collaboration, combining the work of several professors and both graduate and undergraduate students from the partnered universities, which in addition to Princeton include Texas A&M University, Rice University, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Johns Hopkins University and the City College of New York.