Spring 2007

Doh Chang Lee, a Ph.D. Candidate working with Professor Brian Korgel in Chemical Engineering, has won the Portfolio Program Best Presentation Award for his presentation "Synthesis and Magnetic Properties of SiO2-encapsulated FePt Nanocrystals" at the Graduate Portfolio Program Research Colloquium on April 18, 2007. Graduating Students of the Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Graduate Portfolio Program present their research at the Portfolio Program Research Colloquium every semester. Mr. Lee’s presentation was chosen from the fourteen graduating students of the portfolio program who presented their research at the Colloquium held April 18th, 2007 in NST 1.104. Mr. Lee’s award includes a $500 first prize. Forrest Davidson of Chemical Engineering won the inaugural prize in the Fall semester of 2006.

Spring 2007

Christopher Carlton, a Ph.D student in Prof. Paulo Ferreira’s lab, received the Howard J. Arnott award for best student paper from the Texas Society for Microscopy for his work on "In-situ TEM nanoindentation of silver nanoparticles". This experimental work was coupled with mathematical image analysis and theoretical analytical modeling of crystalline defects in nanoparticles.

Summer 2007

Carlos Aguilar, a doctoral student in biomedical engineering, received the George H. Mitchell Award, for his research in nanomaterials. His research focuses on developing nanomaterials that convert the body’s energy into electricity that can be used to power medical implants such as pacemakers.
Aguilar’s supervising professors are Shaochen Chen, associate professor of mechanical engineering and Marc Feldman, Interventional Cardiologist at the UT Health Science Center – San Antonio.

Fall 2007

Winner of the Best Talk for the Portfolio Student Presentations Fall 2007

Yaoyu Pang - "Surface Evolution and Self Assembly of Epitaxial Thin Films: Nonlinear and Anisotropic Effects"

Spring 2008

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.

Summer 2008

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.