The vision of the Materials Assembly and Design Excellence in South Carolina (MADE in SC) initiative is to discover and establish new and sustainable approaches for the design and assembly of hierarchical materials at multiple relevant length scales that serve South Carolina’s STEM research, education and workforce needs and invigorate economic development. The focus of this initiative is to discover and develop new intelligently designed optical, electrochemical and magnetic materials, stimuli-responsive polymeric materials, and interactive biomaterials.