The University of Texas at Austin has one of the largest and most influential nanoscience and nanotechnology faculty world-wide. Some of the main research areas incude nanoelectronics, nano biology and medicine, nano structured polymers, nanoparticle synthesis, nanotechnology for energy needs (e.g. for photovoltaics, fuel cells and catalysis), nano applications to spintronics and plasmonics, nano imprint lithography, nano tube research, and nanomechanics. Click here to see our full faculty listing.

Dr. Muhammad Zaman receives the 2008 Cockrell School of Engineering Award for Outstanding Engineering Teaching by an Assistant Professor

This award recognizes outstanding classroom teaching by an assistant professor to promote and encourage exceptional teaching in a faculty member's early career. More...

Five Scientists Win Sloan Fellowships At The University of Texas at Austin

Five faculty members at The University of Texas at Austin were awarded Sloan Research Fellowships for 2008 including CNM fellows Xiaoqin Li and Christopher Bielawski.

For Creating New Field Of Science, Bard Wins International Prize

Chemist Allen Bard was awarded the 2008 Wolf Prize in Chemistry for pioneering the development of the scanning electrochemical microscope.

UT Physicist and Colleagues Lead Five-Member Nanoscience Consortium

Researchers from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and The University of Texas at Austin will explore ways to control optical energy for applications in nanoscience and nanotechnology as leaders of a five-university consortium awarded $1.4 million by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

CNM Fellow Sanjay Banerjee elected as 2007 Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Four professors at The University of Texas at Austin have been elected as 2007 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

AAAS fellows are chosen annually by their peers to recognize their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications

Dr. Shaochen Chen elected Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME)

Fellow Grade is the highest elected grade of membership within ASME, the attainment of which recognizes exceptional engineering achievements and contributions to the engineering profession.

Dr. Katherine "Kallie" Willets is joining us as an Assistant Professor this fall. She received her doctoral degree in physical chemistry at Stanford University, and has been doing postdoctoral research at Northwestern University since 2005.

Dr. Willets' research focuses on using ultra sensitive spectroscopic techniques—including single molecule fluorescence, surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), and single nanoparticle localized surface Plasmon resonance (LSPR) spectroscopy—to study molecular photophysics and environmental interactions at the nanoscale level.

Willets will be teaching Analytical Chemistry in the fall and we are delighted to have her here with us.

-www.cm.utexas.edu

Photo by Akiko Ruoff

New CNM faculty member publishes paper in Nature on graphene-based thin film material with novel properties.

Rod Ruoff, Cockrell Family Endowed Chair in Mechanical Engineering, will join UT Austin in September, 2007 where he and his research group will invent and study new materials, methods, and devices.  Ruoff, a physical chemist, has research interests in nanotechnology, materials science, and energy and the environment.

CNM Faculty Member Named Fulbright Scholar in Spain Next Year

Brian Korgel, associate professor in chemical engineering, has been named a Fulbright Scholar in Spain for the 2007-2008 school year. He will conduct research on nanorods in the Departments of Applied Physics and Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Alicante. Korgel will collaborate with Professors Joaquin Fernandez Rossier and Juan Jose Palaciosth, both in applied physics. Their research seeks to develop a variety of new technologies that will test fundamental understanding of materials chemistry and properties.

Graduate Student Receives Two Best Paper Awards

From UT Engineering News:

T. Muraliganth, materials science and engineering graduate student, was honored with two best paper awards. Muraliganth received the Best Student Presentation award in materials science from the Texas Society for Microscopy for his paper, “LiFePO4 Nanorods Networked with Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes for Energy Storage Applications.” He also received the Best Clean Energy Poster award at Nano Night 2008 and CleanTX Innovation Showcase for his poster entitled “Rapid Synthesis of LiFePO4 Nanorods and their Nanohybrids for Energy Storage Applications.” The research work was carried out by both Muralinganth and postdoctoral fellow Dr. A. Vadivel Murugan, who are supervised by Dr. Arumugam Manthiram, professor of Mechanical Engineering.

Both of these papers focus on developing low cost, nanostructured cathodes for high power lithium ion batteries.

Winner of the Best Talk for the Portfolio Student Presentations Spring 2008 -"Tuning Surface Energy Landscapes of Quantum Metal Thin Films with Alkali Adsorbates"

Alexander Khajetoorians, is a doctoral student in the Physics department and also part of the IGERT program. His supervising professors are Chih-Kang Shih and Allan Macdonald.

Quantum confinement shows a strong interplay between growth and kinetics in thin metal systems where the Fermi wavelength has a special relationship to the surface normal lattice constant. In the case of Pb/Si(111) systems, this relationship reveals an interesting thickness-dependent bilayer oscillation in the density of states and surface energy up to a phase. He is interested in how the introduction of surface adsorbates modify or enhance growth-related quantum size effects (QSE) in these systems. Furthermore, he is interested in studying the surface reactivity of these systems and how adsorption is influenced by electronic confinement.

More student profiles here...