News

Two Center students have recently received travel awards to present their research at scientific conferences. Northwestern University graduate student Alicia McGeachy received a travel award to present her work, “Quantifying Polycation-Membrane Interactions from Experiment and Theory” at the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) annual meeting.   Hyo Park, a junior at Chaminade University in Honolulu who participated in the CSN’s Research Experience for Veterans program this summer as a student in Professor Zeev Rosenzweig’s lab, also received a travel award. He will attend the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) to present his poster titled “Quantum Dot Chemical Stability and their Interactions with Zebrafish Embryos.” Congratulations to Alicia and Hyo!

Last week, CSN graduate student Eric Melby successfully defended his doctoral dissertation, entitled “Influence of proteins and ordered lipid domains on nanoparticle interactions with model biomembranes.” Eric’s will be staying with the Center, but in a new role as a postdoctoral trainee at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Congratulations, Dr. Melby!

Congratulations to CSN student Liz Laudadio from UW-Madison for winning the first place poster prize at this week’s International Conference on the Environmental Effects of Nanoparticles and Nanomaterials (ICEENN) in Colorado. Liz’s poster is titled, “Attenuated Total Reflection FTIR for in situ measurements of supported lipid bilayer formation and interaction with nanomaterials.”

The American Chemical Society (ACS) meeting is fast approaching, and many Center members will be presenting throughout the week. Want to organize your conference schedule around the CSN? See the table below for a chronological list of our presentations; you can also download the list here, or browse the full program by day, author, topic, etc. here.   Presenter Title Date/Time Location Session detail link Christy Haynes Lipopolysaccharide density and structure governs the interaction between the bacterial outer membrane and engineered nanoparticles Sun, Aug 21 9:30-10:05am Room 104B, Convention Center View Session Detail Chi-Ta Yang Ab initio approach for the study of incongruent NMC metal dissolution in aqueous environment Sun, Aug 21 6:00-8:00pm poster session Halls A/B Convention Center View… Read More »Upcoming CSN Talks at ACS

CSN students have recently completed their programs and graduated! Julianne Troiano defended her doctoral dissertation, “Surface Specific Investigation of the Nano-Bio Interface by Second Harmonic Generation” at Northwestern University, and Md Shariful Islam completed his Master’s program at Tuskegee University with a thesis titled “Interconversion of Cellulose I to Cellulose II: A study of time and temperature effects on its microstructure and comparative analysis of its conversion to CNFs and CNCs by chemical methods.” Congratulations, Juli and Md!

Congratulations to CSN Director Bob Hamers, who will be among the 57 American Chemical Society members honored as 2016 ACS Fellows. According to the announcement in C&E News, “The fellows program began in 2009 as a way to recognize and honor ACS members for outstanding achievements in and contributions to science, the profession, and ACS.”

Congratulations to Cathy Murphy, Sam Lohse, and Jonathan Eller, whose patent for their millifluidic reactor for making gold nanoparticles was issued today! You can read more about the benchtop reactor in Dr. Lohse’s blog post, “Designing a Simple, Easy-to-Build Reactor for Making Nanoparticles.”

The University of Minnesota Department of Chemistry held their annual Graduate Student Research Symposium yesterday, where third-year doctoral students presented 20-minute talks about their research to an audience of peers, faculty, alumni, and guests. Panels of judges including faculty and distinguished guests granted one first place and one honorable mention for each of the four presentation tracks. CSN student Sunipa Pramanik (Haynes lab) received the honorable mention award for her track. Congratulations, Sunipa! You can read more about the symposium here.  

The CSN is featured in the cover article of the current issue of Badger Chemist, the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Chemistry alumni magazine. The article (starting on page 9) particularly highlights the work of graduate student Mimi Hang and the Center’s lab exchange program. CSN Director Bob Hamers is also discussed in the “faculty news” section on page 5, and Dr. Hamers and fellow faculty member Qiang Cui are also mentioned among the department’s award recipients, along with recent graduate Marco Torelli on pages 15/17. Update June 14: You can now read the story without downloading a PDF by going to the university’s Chemistry Department website here.

Dr. Mike Curry had the honor of presenting the keynote speech at the recent 6th grade graduation ceremony for Tuskegee Public School in Tuskegee, AL. “I had the chance to interact with a very driven bunch of 6th grade kids,” he said.  “This was the best outreach experience that I have had in my career so far…..simply awesome!” Congratulations to the graduates!