NanoScience Student Chosen to Attend Nobel Laurate Meeting  Paul Stokes has been selected as one of the 60 participants from the United States to attend the upcoming Lindau Nobel Laurate Meeting for Physics in Germany. Paul is a graduate student in the Department of Physics and is a student of Dr. Saiful Khondaker, who has a joint faculty appointment at the NanoScience Technology Center and in Physics. Paul and Dr. Khondaker have been exploring the mass fabrication of nanoelectric devices using carbon nanotubes (as shown above) as documented in their recent paper in the journal Nanotechnology (19, 175202, 2008) titled "Local-gated single-walled carbon nanotube field effect transistors assembled by AC dielectrophoresis". This paper has received a lot of attention and is currently featured in Nanotechweb.org in an article titled "Large-scale fabrication approach of CMOS compatible high-performance nanotube transistors". Dr. Khondaker initiated Paul's nomination to the Nobel Laurate Meeting which was formally nominated by the VP of Research, Dr. M.J. Soileau. As part of this process, Paul will attend the meeting in Germany, he will listen to the Nobel prize winners' lectures, and will take part in various networking experiences during this week long event from June 29th to July 4th. We congratulate Paul and hope he enjoys this rich educational experience.

NSF CAREER AWARDS  The NanoScience Technology Center is proud to announce that three of its faculty members received the prestigious National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (NSF CAREER) award in 2008. The CAREER recipients are Drs. Saiful Khondaker (joint Physics appointment), Andre Gesquiere (joint Chemistry appointment), and Lei Zhai (joint Chemistry appointment). This is a tremendous accomplishment for the three-year old NSTC. Only a few individuals are chosen each year for this award and it is highly unusual for so many to be awarded to a single center or department. As described in the NSF web site: "The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards in support of the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization."

DARPA Young Faculty Award  We are happy to announce that Dr. Michael Leuenberger (joint Physics appointment) has received the prestigious Young Faculty Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense (DoD). The Young Faculty Award was created to offer a venue by which research ideas proposed by young faculty can be sponsored and promoted within the Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) at DARPA. The Young Faculty Award (YFA) is expected to provide MTO with revolutionary research ideas that are critical to future technology developments. We congratulate Dr. Leuenberger in this achievement and wish him success in this new endeavor.

Three Nano Students Win Best Poster Awards at the 2008 UCF Research Week  
We congratulate Atul Asati (mentor: Dr. Perez), Xiong Liu (mentor: Dr. Huo), and Paul Stokes (mentor: Dr. Khondaker) on this accomplishment. The UCF Research Week is an annual event held to highlight student's unique contributions to the university's research mandate. Each annual Research Week has a defining theme and this year's topic was the Environment: Conservation, Energy, and the Quality of Life. The topics of the students posters range from a gold nanoparticle assay that shows potential as a cancer biomarker, cerium oxide nanoparticles (nanoceria) that could be used as neuroprotective agents, and a technique of using carbon nanotubes as transistors that could be used in nanoelectric devices.

NANO @ UCF  For more information see UCF's Office of Research & Commercialization Winter 2008 quarterly newsletter in which they highlighted NANO.

It is the mission of the Nanoscience Technology Center to bring multidisciplinary expertise in nanoscale science and technology to bear on problems of regional, state, and national need, in order to acquire new knowledge, educate students, create new technology, and promote industrial development, and to act as a unifying force for interdisciplinary research at UCF. »Learn More

What is nanoscience technology?
Nanoscience technology is a combination of chemistry, physics, biology and industrial engineering to. . . »More

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