News

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has announced that Professor Qiang Cui has won a Kellett Mid-Career Award, which recognizes outstanding faculty seven to 20 years after their first promotion to a tenured position.  Sponsored by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF), “The awards are intended to honor those faculty who have made major contributions to the advancement of knowledge, primarily through their research endeavors, but also as a result of their teaching and service activities”.  Congratulations QC!

Silatronix, the startup company co-founded in 2007 by CSN Director Bob Hamers, is expanding its battery production in collaboration with a major manufacturer in Japan. For more information, read the University of Wisconsin-Madison News story, “Madison-made electrolyte going big at global battery manufacturer.”  

Congratulations to Margaret (Margy) Robinson, a graduate student in the Hamers group, in for being named the 2016 recipient of the Farrington Daniels Award for Ethical Leadership. This University of Wisconsin-Madison Chemistry Department Award is given to one student annually who best exemplifies ethical leadership. Margy is being recognized for her leadership in improving the culture of safety within the department, and for her work organizing bicycling as a community-building activity. (Margy has written about bicycling and nanotechnology for the Sustainable Nano blog here and here.) The award is named for Farrington Daniels, a UW chemistry faculty member. Daniels worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II but after the war was an early champion of solar energy who worked… Read More »Student Margaret Robinson Wins Farrington Daniels Award for Ethical Leadership

Congratulations to Arielle Mensch and Lily Klapper, both students in the Hamers group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,  for their receipt of a Stephen Morton Award for Mentoring. The Morton award is given to a graduate student mentor and their undergraduate student mentee. Arielle has been mentoring Lily on the functionalization of AFM tips with molecules to enable direct measurement of molecular interaction forces at interfaces. Arielle is also being recognized with a PPG Industries Mentoring Award for 2015-16.

CSN faculty member Erin Carlson was recently interviewed on Minnesota Public Radio as part of host Kerri Miller’s “Friday Roundtable” program. Along with Grace Coggio from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls and Trey Williams from Carleton College, Dr. Carlson discussed “Six Things I Wish I’d Known Before Starting College.” You can hear the full interview here.

CSN Faculty Member Mike Curry was featured in the most recent issue of InChemistry Magazine, along with the Tuskegee University student chapter of the American Chemical Society. The article highlights the student group’s activities and Dr. Curry’s role as the chapter advisor over the past 14 years. Congratulations, Dr. Curry!

CSN Director Bob Hamers appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Larry Meiller show yesterday to discuss the topic “Materials Research for Renewable Energy.” Also part of the conversation was John Greenler, Director of Education and Outreach at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) and the Wisconsin Energy Institute (WEI). You can listen to the full interview here.

Congratulations to Merve DoÄŸangün, whose recent blog post, Aerogels: Nanotechnology to Space and Beyond, was selected as a ScienceSeeker Editor’s Pick for the week of March 28. (One of Merve’s previous posts, Mimicking Nature’s Nanotechnology: From a butterfly wing to anti-counterfeit technologies, was also highlighted by ScienceSeeker.)

University of Wisconsin-Madison student Emily Caudill won the First Place Poster Presentation Award at the recent Midwest meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) for her poster on interaction of nanoparticles with Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacterial surfaces. The award included $1000 to cover travel expenses for the conference or for future SETAC conferences. 3M was the supporter of the award. Congratulations, Emily!

CSN Associate Director Christy Haynes has been named as an associate editor for the journal Analytical Chemistry, a publication of the American Chemical Society (ACS). As the ACS website says, analytical chemistry is a branch of chemistry that involves “obtaining, processing, and communicating information about the composition and structure of matter. In other words, it is the art and science of determining what matter is and how much of it exists.” Congratulations to Dr. Haynes for this prestigious appointment! You can read more at the University of Minnesota Chemistry Department website.