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Dry etching techniques are split into three categories: physical dry etching, chemical dry etching, and physical-chemical dry etching. Physical dry etching techniques use the kinetic energy generated by particle beams (ion, electron, and photon beams) to knock out atoms from the substrate’s surface, which subsequently evaporate and are easily removed. Although this method is suitable for almost all surfaces, not being limited to a specific chemical reaction, the reflected ions can wear off nearby surfaces also known as trench effects. Additionally, ions remove mask materials at a high rate, which can limit the depth one can etch with this technique. Secondly, chemical dry etching uses etchant gases to degrade the substrate’s surface. Gaseous by-products are desired since solid by-products can deposit on the surface and protect from further reaction. Physical-chemical dry etching, also known as reactive ion etching (RIE), is a combination of the two methods described previously. Etchant gases are excited into an ionic state and deflected perpendicularly onto the substrate’s surface under low pressure and a magnetic field. As opposed to wet etching, RIE can be more controlled, leading to etch sidewalls that are vertical or anisotropic in nature. Each etch technique results in slightly different sidewall profiles and varying etch rates for different materials.23e:T44d,Lithography was invented by a Bavarian playwright, Alois Senefelder, in 1798 who unintentionally discovered that he was able to reproduce his scripts using greasy crayons on limestone to print multiple copies. In 1826, Joseph Niepce, a French scientist, produced the world’s first photograph, however it wasn’t until the mid-1950s, that these fundamental principles were applied in such a way to create patterned surfaces with the intention to make small electronic devices. The movement to shrink transistors from millimeters to microns and eventually to nanometer scale, was derived from the need to increase computing power with integrated circuits, following Gordon Moore’s Law or prediction that that the number of transistors per silicon chip doubles every two years (see previous blog post for more details).23f:T415,There are several other more specialized types of lithography techniques designed to serve many other uses. Despite being expensive and time-consuming, electron beam lithography (EBL) can generate structures that can be as small as 10 nm. This utilizes tightly focused beams of electrons instead of photons (light) that disperse and expose a pattern in a polymer which can be used to create high-resolution structures. New multi-photon lithography techniques allow for the patterning of polymers in three dimensions, opening an entirely new space of applications. Scanning probe lithography (SPL) utilizes a nanoscale tip that is capable of removing or adding material in a serial method as it moves along a surface. These are just a few examples of the many emerging ways to pattern nanoscale features on surfaces.240:T7d3,Looking back, I realize that I had great mentors at each step of my career. I did my undergrad in a small city called San Luis, a couple of hundred miles away from my hometown in Argentina. I studied chemistry there and made a ton of friends. I am still in close contact and even have scientific collaborations with some of them. I then worked for a few months for Kimberly Clark Corp. (KCC) in one of their Buenos Aires branches. During this time at KCC, I learned a lot from my mentor there, but I decided that industry work was not what I wanted. So, I moved to Milwaukee, WI, here in the U.S., for my PhD studies. Milwaukee is also a great city, with a thriving young and open-minded population around the university. I had a great time there, both socially and professionally. There I also made another ton of friends, and I met a great girl I later married. After that, we moved to Berlin, Germany, where I did my postdoc for about three years. Berlin was an exciting place to live, very diverse and dynamic. Awesome new friends and mentors again. Our first son was born there. In 2013, we moved back to the U.S. I started working as a Materials Scientist at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), which is part of Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in Long Island, NY. The CFN is one of the 5 Nanoscale Research Centers (NSRC) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and BNL is one of the 17 DOE National Labs. Also, a fantastic place to work, with some of the world’s most advanced instrumentation and a bunch of brilliant people. I enjoy, in particular, the CFN culture, which is growing layers and becoming thicker.241:T492,I feel very close to early-career scientists as I was there not that long ago (or at least I’d like to think that way) and I know what it feels like, and how challenging of a time it can be. Probably the most stressful part is the uncertainty when looking for a job. I try to participate, advise, and help whenever I can through organizations like the Association of Students And Postdocs (ASAP) at BNL or participating in events organized by Brookhaven Women In Science (BWIS). Organizations like BWIS, that promote equal opportunity and advancement for women in science are very important. I think we still have a long way to go in recognizing our internal biases, these changes take generations. I have seen firsthand how difficult this is. A female colleague pointed out manifestations of these biases at our group meetings, and it was eye-opening to start paying attention to our group dynamics. I have seen myself doing things wrong when looking back at specific situations. We all have unconscious biases coming to a great extent from the way we were raised. Becoming aware of them, one individual at the time is the first step toward a broader cultural change.242:T471,Apart from new research articles, we are also commissioning pieces like Reviews, Commentaries, News&Views meant to make our primary research content accessible to non-experts. As a journal, we are looking to represent all the materials community, from chemists to physicists, from biologists to engineers. I spend time looking at the literature and the latest developments, contacting potential authors and reviewers or editing the pieces. At the same time, since we are a monthly journal, we have strict deadlines from Production about submitting our final content, so we always have to respect those, when writing Editorials for example. There was also a time in the not-so-distant past (Ed. before the Covid-19 pandemic), that we were attending - or even organizing - conferences or giving seminars about the Nature family and scientific publishing in general. Or doing lab visits to talk to researchers directly. Being so close to the communities we are looking after is a very important and rewarding part of our job, which is now maybe evolving into something different because of the pandemic - we have to wait and see really.243:T41a,What I personally found difficult was navigating through the negativity that comes with the job. Given the selectivity of Nature Materials and Nature journals in general, editors are in most cases bearers of not good news: we sent out to review about 15% of what we receive and publish about half of those manuscripts after peer-review. That means that at any given moment there are many people that are unhappy with me, and often they let me know. It took me several years to not take such reactions personally. I still remember my first appeal email, a single but very offensive sentence from someone who clearly needed to let some steam out – I completely froze upon reading it! I completely understand however how sentimental authors feel regarding their work - I was one of them some years ago - and their need to fight for it, with us, with the reviewers. The system is organized in such a way that editors are meant to act as the buffer between the two parties, and sometimes it is not pleasant, like being a lawyer mitigating a bad divorce.244:T49e,A recent example would be co-organizing a session on Metamaterials and Grand challenges for the Metamaterials series conference in 2017. Among the many excellent invited speakers, Harry Atwater from Caltech talked about the materials challenges for an ultralight laser-driven spacecraft for interstellar travel (Breakthrough Starshot Initiative), which became the basis for a Perspective published the year after in Nature Materials. I don’t think the journal had ever covered this topic before, it was such a new direction for me as an editor! Tommaso Ghidini, head of the Structures, Mechanisms and Materials Division of the European Space Agency (ESA) contributed another fantastic Commentary on the extreme properties that materials used for space missions need to possess and explained how one day we may able to build bases on the Moon for in situ manufacturing. This Space Focus issue is definitely one of my favorites.245:T6fe,Science editors oversee every single aspect involving the publication of an article and the dissemination of scientific developments within their journal. Now more than ever their effort is fundamental to maintain high-quality standards in publications and ensure the progress of legitimate scientific knowledge. Year by year, we are seeing a substantial increase in the global scientific output. Propelled by the globalization of scientific research and the rise of emerging markets, the number of articles published each year now passed 2.5 million units, carrying an annual growth rate above 4%. The decision by The Review of Higher Education – a highly respected academic journal – to temporarily suspend submissions due to a backlog of more than two years’ worth of articles, is the mirror of a frantic race to publication and of a content crisis the entire academic publishing system is now facing. The pressure to “publish at all costs” is fostering the emergence of an uncountable number of publishers, including predatory and fraudulent journals, and the uptake of questionable practices such as what is termed as salami slicing, which consists of researchers splitting papers into multiple publishable units to increase their publication output and boost their citation prospects. This overload is undermining the overall quality of scientific output, the sustainability and validity of secondary research and the accessibility of relevant meaningful information, that get lost in a sea of mediocrity.246:T481,ThINC is a core facility at the AERTC which provides sample preparation, thermo-mechanical characterization and multiscale imaging services for innovation and research in pharmaceuticals, materials design & manufacturing, medical devices, nanotechnology, agricultural technology and life sciences. ThINC is committed to providing holistic solutions to materials and nanoscience problems by providing access to world-class instrumentation, expert personnel and expanding our services based on user needs by establishing partnerships between Stony Brook University and government, university and/or industrial laboratories. ThINC was conceptualized and established in 2012 and was an integral part of the AERTC's mission of offering collaborative R&D services to industry, start-ups and academia alike. It took about 2 years to fully install major instruments and the official grand opening was held in 2014. Since its inception, ThINC has been continually growing its instrumentation capabilities as well as the scientific expertise by professional development of facility personnel to ensure the best user experience and service can be provided.247:T429,ThINC is a comprehensive core facility consisting of tools for (a) multiscale imaging and characterization microscopy, such as transmission electron microscope (TEM), focused ion beam-scanning electron microscope (FIB-SEM), atomic force microscope (AFM), and confocal microscope, (b) thermal-mechanical suite, including thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA), and thermal conductivity meter, and (c) sample preparation station providing a robust set of equipment for needed samples of (cryogenic) microscopy imaging and characterization. ThINC provides its users access to these state-of-the-art instruments for advancing their research in drug discovery, nanotechnology, life sciences and materials design through chemical, crystallographic, mechanical, morphological, optical, and thermal characterization. More recently, we have been building a collaborative network with other facilities both at SBU and outside to provide our users access to instruments we currently do not have at ThINC.248:T4aa,We have assisted more than 90 academic users since our inception. The research group, led by Dr. Miriam Rafailovich, has been conducting a wide range of research, including nanoscale materials engineering, photovoltaic polymers, nanocomposites, flame retardant materials, biodegradable polymers, tissue engineering, 3D printing and biomedical additive manufacturing. Dr. Rafailovich's group acquired cryo and regular Images from FIB-SEM and TEM to study nanocomposites, soft materials, and biomaterials. They have utilized Immunolabeling confocal microscopy and conducted thermo-mechanical studies for tissue engineering, 3D printing and biomedical additive manufacturing. Another research group, led by Dr. Benjamin Hsiao, has utilized our services for developing new nanofiber technologies, based on electrospun nanofibers and natural nanostructured cellulose materials, for health, environmental, and energy applications. The data acquired by both groups has been published in high-Impact peer-reviewed journals such as Macromolecules, ACS Applied Nano Materials, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, etc. as well as has been presented at many national and international conferences.249:T569,I had been working in the nanofab for about a year as a grad student but was unsatisfied with the research I was doing. I was asking a lot of philosophical questions about the motivation and end goal of the work we were doing and was curious about how the technology we were developing was helping us grow as individuals. I was talking to a number of PI's about research projects and one mentioned that the NSF had funding for a research project in the ethics of technology. It was really the perfect opportunity for me to explore some of these questions further. Most of the content that had been previously developed focused on scientific fraud and safety concerns. I wanted to take the conversation to a more philosophical level. I wanted to know how scientists perceived their role in society and how much responsibility they took for the technology and knowledge that they developed. I held discussion groups and posed open-ended philosophical questions and collected a lot of survey data. The results suggested that most scientists at the time using the lab did not believe their work would have a deep impact on society and that they didn't have a particular social responsibility to be aware of social issues. I also got feedback from fellow students that the work I was doing ,and more ethics education in general, would hinder the progress of science and was a waste of time.24a:T694,After high school, at the age of 18, I moved to Rome to get a Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology at La Sapienza University. I remember the first years were quite challenging because I had so many classes and exams and, coming from a school focused on classical studies, I had to catch up with all the science subjects. But I felt very determined and did very well. Living in Rome was an incredible experience. I enjoyed the city as well as the campus life with my new friends and classmates. After graduating in Biotechnology with a thesis on gene silencing in Neurospora Crassa, I moved to Milan to pursue a Master’s in Medical Biotechnology at Bicocca University. Milan is a vibrant, wealthy city in the north of Italy, with strengths in many fields including scientific research. It was during this period that I heard about the possibility to engineer human tissues in the laboratory using stem cells and biomaterials. I loved the engineering fields since I was a kid, so I decided to become a tissue engineer and work in the field of regenerative medicine. To gain experience in the field, in the framework of my Master’s experimental experience, I worked on a project in collaboration with La Stazione Sperimentale per la Seta, focused on the engineering of a new biomaterial by piecing together two natural polymers - chitosan and silk. After graduating, I was given the opportunity to join the International School of Bioinformatics in Valencia, Spain where I learned a lot about sequence assembly, genome annotation, protein modeling, and protein interaction networks.24b:T491,In 2007, I was awarded the Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship for international doctorate in tissue engineering. So, I moved to Sweden to pursue a Ph.D. degree under the supervision of Prof. Thomsen at the University of Gothenburg. The award was granted to nine European students, each conducting research in a different country but on a common project, which focused on using a tissue engineering approach to treat conditions affecting human bones and joints. In particular, I explored the use of human embryonic stem cells for bone regeneration, prospective that is very appealing as embryonic stem cells can be produced in very large numbers and can be turned into all types of cells that make up our body. In order to grow bone in the laboratory, one must combine the cells with specific biomaterial scaffolds that act as frameworks for the cells to grow new bone. So, I tested the potential of different materials to work as a scaffold and engineered the candidate materials using different methods.24c:T6fb,I became aware of the NYSCF in 2009 while attending a conference on stem cells in San Francisco, California. NYSCF is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to accelerate cures for the major diseases of our time through stem cell research. I soon came to appreciate NYSCF diverse research on all types of stem cells, including human embryonic stem cells (the same I studied during my Ph.D.) and human-induced pluripotent stem cells. The latter are derived via reprogramming of somatic cells, such as skin or blood cells, by inducing the expression of specific factors that are active in embryonic stem cells. Induced pluripotent stem cells can be derived from each patient in a cost-effective fashion and lack the ethical implications associated with the isolation of stem cells from human embryos. At NYSCF, researchers are using these cells to create tissue models in Petri dishes to study diseases and identify potential treatments. Believing the NYSCF to be the perfect place for engineering more complex tissues for personalized applications in patients, I decided to join the Foundation as a postdoctoral fellow and move to New York City, the city I always loved. At NYSCF I found the perfect environment and freedom to conduct high-risk/high-reward research. We were the first to demonstrate that patient-specific bone could be engineered from skin cells. Given the potential medical and social impact of my work, I was appointed leader of the Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering team, which focuses on the use of stem cells to develop research models and therapies for aiding patients suffering from musculoskeletal conditions.24d:T564,A fun anecdote of how my family roots ties into my scientific career comes in the decision to grow off-season watermelons in the Urban Food Lab. There’s a family legend about my seventh great grandfather Abd al-Rahman. There are many versions of this story, so I will give you a general overview. As it is told, once upon a time, over two hundred years ago, my great great great great great great great grandfather Abd al-Rahman was a trader. One day, while he was on a trade trip with his business partner, he was betrayed. His partner killed him and beheaded him. Years later when that murderous business partner was on the same route, he found a watermelon patch with watermelons being grown off season. Excited by the uniqueness of the discovery, he takes a watermelon to the local Bedouin chief for a reward. When they open the watermelon, the found Abd al-Rahman’s head… a miracle! The story varies on what happened next, if the head talked, or the killer confessed, but the one and only part of this story that is verifiable is that they built a tomb for Abd al-Rahman and a mosque around that tomb. Bedouins moved around this mosque and settled. The town became known as Sidi Abd al-Rahman or “Sir” Abd al-Rahman. It’s a town that I have visited often as a child and even as an adult. I’ve seen the mosque and the tomb, but I mostly go for the amazing beach.24e:T74b,Columbia Nano Initiative (CNI) was established jointly in 2014 by the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) and the School of Arts and Sciences (A&S) to foster advanced multidisciplinary and collaborative research in Nanoscale Science and Engineering. The CNI establishment builds upon a long history of multidisciplinary research across academic departments at Columbia University, originating with the Columbia Radiation Laboratory (CRL), which was founded in 1942 by Prof. I. I. Rabi and focused on radar development research as well as important laser related discoveries. During the 1980’s and 1990's CRL was led by Prof. Richard Osgood and Prof. George Flynn and in 2000, CRL changed its name to the Center for Integrated Science and Engineering (CISE) to reflect the nature of the continuing research program. CNI was an evolvement of CISE and was founded by Prof. Keren Bergman and Prof. Jim Yardley, mainly to answer a growing need to upgrade the existing research infrastructure and facilities for nanoscience and engineering. Under the new initiative the university invested over $20M in renovating the shared labs and upgrading its research equipment. This led to the development of several major research centers and programs including the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) and the Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC), as well as state-of-the-art shared nanofabrication, characterization, and microscopy facilities that support and enable groundbreaking research.24f:T4ad,The CNI Shared laboratory facilities consist of a Clean Room facility for micro- and nanofabrication located on the 10th floor of the CEPSR building, an e-beam writing suite on the 7th floor of the Northwest Corner building, a Shared Materials Characterization Laboratory (SMCL) located on the 2nd and 5th floors of Havemeyer, and an Electron Microscopy (EM) laboratory located in the basement of Havemeyer, as well as in CEPSR 1016. The clean room consists of a comprehensive set of nanofabrication instruments which are available to use for device architecture in various applications; nanoelectronic and nanophotonic, microfluidics, micro and nano-electromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS), 2D materials, flexible electronics, nano-bio interfaces, and more. The Materials Characterization Laboratory and the Electron Microscopy laboratory provide access to state-of-the-art instruments for chemical, thermal, optical, magnetic, and crystallographic characterization of materials at the micro- and nanoscale.250:T532,The labs are managed by a team of dedicated technical staff who are responsible for the smooth and safe operation of the labs, technical equipment preventative maintenance and repair, consumables, materials, and chemicals supply, as well as users training, process and research support. I am fortunate to have three highly professional lab directors reporting to me, James Vichiconti is the Director of the Clean Room, Dr. Amir Zangiabadi, the Director of the EM lab, and Dr. Dan Paley, the Director of SMCL. We have two highly experienced process engineers, Dr. Youry Borisenkov, and Dr. Phil Chow, working in the clean room assisting with users’ research and developing research protocols. Supporting the three labs are also Cris Belfer, the CNI labs equipment engineer who is responsible for the smooth supply of the labs utilities and facilities, and our very dedicated research operation assistant Melody Gonzalez who is making sure the labs supply is sufficient, provides lab orientation, and more. For training and certification we also get the help from approximately 20 experienced and dedicated students who are “super users” for certain pieces of equipment and their involvement in our operation serves both as part of their own professional training as well as takes some of the workload off the technical staff.251:T460,A large group of researchers, led by Prof. Michal Lipson, are working in our facility on silicon photonics. They are fabricating optical and non-linear optical devices, MEMS and NEMS for optomechanics, optofluidics, and neuroscience applications using silicon nanofabrication technology. Another major area of research performed using the CNI shared labs is in 2D materials. These researchers are studying 2D material properties and fabricating devices from graphene, BN, WS2 and other exciting materials. This group is also part of the Columbia University Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC), headed by Prof. Jim Hone and Prof. Collin Nuckolls. Prof. Nuckolls is leading together with Prof. Xiaoyang Zhu another research area of multifunctional materials made of superatoms, tailoring materials properties of atom clusters for novel materials.252:T4bb,I did my 'Junior College' (grades XI and XII) and Bachelor's degree at St. Xavier's College in Mumbai, then a Master's at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay...all in physics. I then went to the US, to do a PhD in physics at Harvard University, where David Vanderbilt was my advisor. I did postdocs at Brookhaven National Lab in Long Island and then at the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin. Since 1996 I have been on the faculty of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) in Bangalore, India. This is a relatively new and small research institute in India's 'science city' of Bangalore; by many metrics one can easily argue that it is one of the best places to do science in India. I am a member of the Theoretical Sciences Unit and the School of Advanced Materials at JNCASR. We have 28 materials scientists here, which is one of the highest concentrations in the country.253:T467,I have always been very aware of how much of a minority we are, as women in science...right from the time of my Junior College class at St. Xavier's college, which consisted of 71 men and 4 women! I think women in science have a tough time everywhere, and women in science in developing countries have even more constraints that they have to operate within. I used to be a member of the Working Group for Women in Physics of IUPAP. Since 2013, I have been co-organizing Career Development Workshops for Women in Physics at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy. These workshops provide women in physics (primarily from the developing world) a space in which to share their experiences, and also to acquire skills that will help them rise in their careers (that men often pick up through the informal old-boys'-networks that they are part of). We have also conducted this workshop at the brand-new ICTP that was set up last year in Kigali, Rwanda. Women who have attended these workshops have said that they have been transformative experiences.254:T4d7,The Chemists’ Club is a non-profit NYC-based organization that serves students and professionals in chemistry, chemical engineering, and supporting fields. We have members spanning from undergraduates to senior level executives in the industry. My role within the NYU chapter is to plan professional development and networking events to help students find work opportunities in the sciences. I organize a variety of local panel discussions, social outings (e.g. chemical plant tours, brewery tours), and assist with the planning of major industry galas. I also lead a committee of about 10-15 people to plan the annual Bonding Conference, a panel and networking event to connect students and professionals. We have assembled thought leaders from major companies such as Google, BASF, UNESCO, Dow, Deloitte, Microsoft, and more to discuss hot topics including sustainability, diversity and inclusion, and digital innovation. Following a panel discussion, students are invited to present posters and usually obtain job offers, interviews, and internships from this event. It’s really fulfilling for me to plan this particular conference and help students navigate the pipeline to high achievement, you can watch more on our YouTube page!255:T4cf,I adored my experiences in Cambridge and Boston! The Wyss Institute is situated within Harvard’s campus and I worked in Joanna Aizenberg’s research group of over 40 people at the time. During my first tenure in the lab I walked to Harvard’s red-bricked campus to discover that I would be working on a project involving slippery liquid-infused porous surfaces (SLIPS). My mentor handed me a gray cotton t-shirt and told me to modify the fabric to be slippery enough to repel everything – water, oil, ketchup, everything. I developed multi-repellent textiles inspired by the Nepenthes pitcher plant. This work was published in Nanotechnology in December 2013 while I was a college junior. I returned to Boston in January 2014 and first worked on photonic crystal films based on butterfly wing-type light diffraction. I applied iridescent structurally coloured films to everything from flexible plastics to shot glasses with hidden images. For my main project, I invented a colour-changing oxygen sensor modeled after the oxygen-dependent polymerization of melanin precursors in the skin. This work was patented and published as well in 2016! My experiences at Wyss/Harvard emboldened me to pursue research in graduate school.256:T462,10 years, yikes! I am trying not to think about that. I know that my interests, skills, and circumstances will evolve dramatically beyond my PhD and I choose to go where the wind blows rather than put myself into box. Generally though, I would like to access a managerial track within a company as soon as possible. I like research, but I need time away from the bench for a change! I need to work on teams and share ideas with people, I am outgoing, energetic, and innovative; traits that I believe are wasted while working on a specific research problem at the bench. My preference is to work for a small or midsize company once I finish my PhD so that I can be involved with more aspects of company growth than just the science, particularly while my mind is still rife with creativity. Remaining within the fields of materials science, materials technology, colloid science, cosmetics, and surface science is preferred. However, I am also strongly interested in working for science-based non-profits and/or taking on a scientific advisory or consulting type role. Ultimately I am considering a future career in policy.257:T4f9,If you are anything like me, you are about to graduate from a STEM PhD program, you have heard a lot of hype about data science, you are extremely interested and excited to learn, and you also have little (or no) idea about what a data scientist does (or what one is). A simple Google search (http://bfy.tw/3ahU) leaves much to the imagination and is reminiscent of the first time a professor tried to define nanotechnology to me in class. What got me the most interested in data science is the analytical side, and of course, the programming. That is to say, I understand I may not be able to code like a computer science major, but I can at least think like a PhD and analyze accordingly, using some coding skills in my toolset. In a romantic way, I think of data science as the analysis of all forms of data, not only in the traditional research sense. As an experimentalist, I view data science as a liberating way to learn about the world around us, not so constrained by those pesky natural laws. I also know the available positions for data scientists are growing, as well as their salary (the figure below does not even take into account the position of Senior Data Scientist with an overall average salary of $136,663/yr):258:T4dc,Using a method developed in our group, I synthesize nanoparticle oxides consisting of transition metals such as titanium, manganese and iron. The compounds I create have advanced energy and data storage applications. Depending on the desired application and the characterization techniques I decide to use, I process the particles differently, using them in thin films or as magnets. For my PhD I focused mostly on discovering novel materials for nanocomposites, measuring their permittivity in capacitors. I’ve worked a lot with an LCR impedance analyzer which measures the capacitance (among some other things) of a device while applying an AC voltage. By sweeping the frequency of this AC field, I learn about the stability of my materials and gain insight on their ability to store and release charge quickly and efficiently. A major challenge I have faced is finding a concomitantly stable and efficient capacitor, which is something I have overcome by creating nanocomposites with unique components and preparation methods. As a lot of my work involves characterization, I must also find ways to analyze large amounts of data which is something I have learned to deal with using Python, which has saved me a lot of time in the long run.259:T4f5,The Materials Research Society (MRS) has very many resources and opportunities for students. I thought it would be beneficial to take advantage of these opportunities, and along with like-minded students and our favorite advisor emeritus Jacob Trevino, started our university chapter. I have prior experience with student organizations, and I believe it is the best way to achieve goals not directly related to one’s research project. For example, when I and other CUNY graduate students decided to start the MRS we did so because we wanted to provide our student community with resources in the materials science field. Since then we have met with startup companies, incubator and accelerator spaces, students, professors and more. We plan site visits, invite technical speakers and provide workshops for our university community. My goal has always been to expand my university’s network, connecting fellow classmates with professionals and other students in the field. We have meetups at our university, sometimes along with Nanotech NYC and I invite anyone interested to join us. Follow us on Facebook to connect and hear about our upcoming events: https://www.facebook.com/CUNYMRS/25a:T41c,I am a research intern at alpha-En Corp, which is a startup company. Lithium metal batteries are becoming of interest as commercialization is becoming feasible. These batteries have a much higher energy density, often twice as much, than commercial lithium ion batteries. Alpha-En wants to supply the growing demand for lithium metal using a clean technology proprietary process, performed at temperatures lower than an order of magnitude of those currently used, and which is chlorine and mercury free. More specifically, I work on developing and refining this process which yields pure lithium metal. I thoroughly enjoy the faster-paced environment of industry and the small community of a startup. At alpha-En, I have learned to wear many hats and to become creative in solving problems within tight deadlines. For example, I am sometimes in the lab, sometimes explaining technical decisions to stakeholders, or sometimes doing an analysis of supply chains and markets, among other things. I find it very fun.25b:T498,In the framework of my Master’s degree thesis project, I had the chance to spend 6 months working at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), in Tennessee, and in particular with Prof. Kalinin’s research group at the Center for Nanophase Material Sciences (CNMS), and all its talented people. My research focused on the local electrochemical oxidation of superconductor films and heterostructures. It was my first, real, hands-on research experience and, together with the moving to the US, it turned out to be quite a big upheaval. During those months I grew incredibly both on a professional and personal level, expanding my technical knowledge and making my goals more clear. I started to think about scientific research, too frequently neglected in my home country, as a viable future path and for the first time, about joining a PhD program. Living in neighboring Knoxville, I also got a taste of the typical American college life. I experienced all its cliché situations, made lots of friends, everything tied up with plenty of unique adventures. As I said before, quite an upheaval.25c:T49f,Futureworks NYC is a NYCEDC project created to foster the development of manufacturer and tech businesses all across the NYC area, offering services and support both as an incubator and maker-spaces hub. The nanofabrication facility at the ASRC is one of these spaces, open to any type of research group, from industry, academia or start-up. Collaborating as a Marketing Intern I had the chance to organize several events, such as hands-on workshops or seminars and panel discussions, treating different topics around the process of design, realization and commercialization of technologies. These events aimed to advertise the Futureworks NYC project and the diverse possibilities offered by the facilities involved. Nanofabrication techniques training, application of advanced technologies to the fashion industry, and venture capital investments in nanotechnology companies are just few of the topic covered. On a personal point of view, it is a great opportunity to broaden my network and enrich my skillset with off-lab experiences, as much as to get in touch with the tech and start-up scene of NYC.262:I[27201,["/_next/static/immutable/chunks/3vqzefggch6s6.js","/_next/static/immutable/chunks/2olm1m7i1dvw0.js","/_next/static/immutable/chunks/1eyz32zxi7noz.js","/_next/static/immutable/chunks/2t0_4n5h9t7oh.js","/_next/static/immutable/chunks/00t042-npml_w.js"],"IconMark"] 25d:T44f,Despite the recent trade war between U.S. and its declared strategic rivals – offense and defense in the race to innovate, my long-term career goal is practice internationally while based in China. The UK, the US and Europe have long-established patent systems, whereas China’s high-growth economy does not, but is making efforts to catch up build its own system. China and the U.S. were among the top three countries in terms of the number of international PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty) patents filed since 2015. China moved into the second position as a source of international patent applications filed via WIPO in 2017 and with another record year in the use of WIPO's IP services for patents, trademarks and industrial designs, the gap is closing. As of now, two Chinese tech companies were the top filers of international patent applications in 2017, with Huawei and ZTE, followed by Intel, Mitsubishi and Qualcomm. However, its purpose is not so much to protect inventors as to lend credibility to their work. Therefore, there is much left to be done and I aspire to be part of the process.25e:T47b,Regarding the major differences between IP in the two countries, I would say that US companies are more experienced at utilizing patent portfolios for offensive purposes in protecting their business market share, whereas China is more likely to use patent portfolios for defensive purposes. The more aggressive offensive motions involves suing competitors for patent infringements and seeking injunctive relief. Alternatively, the suing party may either demand competitors paying a high royalty fee, or initiate patent litigations at courts seeking large damage awards by the judge. On the other side, a Chinese company is more likely to either negotiate patent cross-licensing agreements with other companies to gain design freedom, or to accumulate patents in one field to enter its market or use patent portfolios as IP shields to chill other companies from suing them for fear of countersuit. Although nowadays, Chinese companies are becoming strategic and proactive in leveraging their patent portfolios. I do not think it’ll be far in future till we see more and more sophisticated IP strategies being practiced by both the U.S. and China.25f:T576,500 Women Scientists is a wonderful group of female scientists. It is to serve society by making science open, inclusive, and accessible. NYC pod has been focusing on science outreach and communication. We have a lot of SciComm experts in our pod and have tried to take advantage of their experience. Our traditional "Science at the Bar" features four female scientists who would short talks on their research at a bar. We have partnered with lots of different organizations for our events as well, e.g. Wikipedia edit-a-thon (in collaboration with WINS at American Museum of Natural History), a panel discussion about people's complex career paths (“Stories behind the CV” in collaboration with New York Academy of Sciences), Science Salon to Benefit Ciencia PR (in collaboration with Taste of Science NYC), and a series of workshops on legal issues for scientists interested in advocacy and activism (“Know Your Rights: Legal Literacy for Scientists” in collaboration with Climate Science Legal Defense Fund). When we invite speakers for our events, we aim to bring together a set of people with different backgrounds - in terms of scientific field, career stage, ethnicity, nationality, and other dimensions of diversity. We also try to plan activities and events that are relevant and interesting to a wide range of women in science.234:["$","section",null,{"id":"$undefined","className":"py-16 sm:py-20 pt-10","children":["$","div",null,{"className":"mx-auto max-w-7xl px-4 sm:px-6 lg:px-8","children":["$","$L23c",null,{"posts":[{"slug":"nanofabrication-series-deposition","oldPath":"/post/nanofabrication-series-deposition","title":"Nanofabrication Series: Deposition","date":"2021-08-04","author":"Alara Sedef Tuncer","category":"Nanofabrication Series","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_5caa06a6e0db4afcbfcf3484b94a2cb5.jpg","width":1344,"height":756},"excerpt":"So far, we’ve discussed top-down nanofabrication techniques for patterning and removing material at a nanoscale such as photolithography and etching, as well as techniques for measuring our work. The question at hand…","readingMinutes":3,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"So far, we’ve discussed top-down nanofabrication techniques for patterning and removing material at a nanoscale such as photolithography and etching, as well as techniques for measuring our work. The question at hand today is what if we want to add new materials? In top-down nanofabrication we add materials by a process known as thin-film deposition."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_5caa06a6e0db4afcbfcf3484b94a2cb5.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Deposition is a term most commonly used in geology when referring to the soil and sediments that attach to landmasses to form layers of built-up coating. A similar analogy can be used to describe thin-film deposition, however in a much more controlled fashion. Rather than the random deposition of material within geological processes, specific materials are chosen based on their physical and chemical properties to construct the desired films or nanostructures."},{"type":"p","html":"There are several different methods to deposit thin-films, with no one-size-fits-all technique. Most thin-film techniques fall into one of two categories, either chemical vapor deposition (CVD) or physical vapor deposition (PVD). CVD is a process that uses heat or plasma to induce chemical reactions at the surface of a heated substrate, with reagents supplied in gaseous form. PVD is a process where a solid material is vaporized in a vacuum environment and deposited on substrates as a pure material or alloy composition coating."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_670eb29238e14b7893c0acd50779b849.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"PVD is a highly diverse technique with several different variations; however, all require vacuum chambers capable of creating very low-pressure environments, a high energy source to vaporize the solid source material, and ideally control substrate temperature to tune the end material’s properties. The two main ways to vaporize the solid source material are thermal heating and sputtering. Thermally evaporated materials are commonly heated by either induction, electron beam, resistive heating elements, or lasers. Sputtered source materials are bombarded with ions created from inert plasmas, to create vaporized atoms. In both techniques, these vaporized atoms travel through the reaction chamber, eventually condensing onto the substrate. This technique allows for the deposition of a wide range of materials, giving engineers and scientists significant flexibility in choosing a thin-film with the desired properties."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_a5a1d291233c4e8db8fe49e4a8e9d7c7.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"CVD is the method of choice when creating the highest-quality thin-film is required. Some of these high-quality characteristics included finer grain structures, higher crystallinity, higher purity films, and better structural integrity. While there are several different types of CVD, they all work with the same basic principle of utilizing controlled vapor phase chemical reactions to create solid films. CVD processes occur in varying degrees of a vacuum environment, depending on the application, and use volatile precursor materials as the source of chemical components that make the end materials. The chemical reactions are aided by an external energy source, most commonly heat or plasma, but sometimes can be laser induced. The chemical reactions occur on the substrate surface, producing the desired film and volatile by-products that are subsequently swept away by the continued pumping and gas flow of incoming precursors."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_532b75d4327c488abbba9ca771985f7f.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Within the CVD family exists a special technique known as atomic layer deposition or ALD. As its name states, ALD is capable of depositing a single monolayer of film at a time. It also is a highly uniform and conformal process, allowing for deposition on complex shapes and curved surfaces. ALD uses two different precursors to build a thin-film in sequential order, meaning the precursors are never in the reaction chamber at the same time. Each time a pulse of precursor is introduced to the substrate, a self-limiting chemical reaction occurs, building one part of the thin-film. The process cycles between the two precursors, giving the engineer ultimate control over the film thickness at the atomic level."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_8f3094d7e4a3437abfff8e65f97d39a0.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"As with every process step in nanofabrication, there are several aspects to consider in thin-film deposition. As an example, the substrate surface needs some capacity to adhere to the molecules that are being deposited. Mismatches in thermal expansion coefficients or lattice constants between the deposited material and substate can cause residual stress, which in its extreme can result in cracking of films. Choosing the correct film and technique for the end device or application is critical. The good news is engineers and scientist have many techniques and materials to choose from!"}]},{"slug":"nanofabrication-series-metrology","oldPath":"/post/nanofabrication-series-metrology","title":"Nanofabrication Series: Metrology","date":"2021-06-22","author":"Alara Sedef Tuncer","category":"Nanofabrication Series","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_d9bcdf43200443b494fb62ec48fa2b9e.jpg","width":1344,"height":756},"excerpt":"Nanotechnology at its core is manipulating and understanding materials at the nanoscale, giving rise to unique properties or device performance. In talking about the nanoscale, to give you a better context, 1…","readingMinutes":4,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Nanotechnology at its core is manipulating and understanding materials at the nanoscale, giving rise to unique properties or device performance. In talking about the nanoscale, to give you a better context, 1 nanometer makes up the size of about three atoms lined up side-by-side (see previous blog post on nanofabrication for more details). While several technologies and techniques have been developed to manipulate materials at this scale, being able to measure nanoscale features of a material or device is critical in developing reliable and powerful nanotechnology based devices. To meet this challenge, scientists and engineers have sought to measure and image what happens to a system at a nanoscale, using techniques grouped under the category of metrology or at this scale, nanometrology."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_1ea2b52557c24b749f75231738ddab65.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Nanometrology is the scientific study of measurement at a nanoscale. The word metrology, the science of measurements, derives from the Greek word “metron” which means to “measure, length or size.” Although the word has Greek roots, the invention of metrology dates back to the French revolution. In 1795, an effort to standardize units in France led to the establishment of the decimal-based metric system. Following suit with the enlightenment movement, several other nations later adopted the metric system. In 1875, when the Treaty of the Metre convened in Paris, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures was founded and under this organization the International System of Units (SI) was established, giving uniformity to many nations in the science of measurements."},{"type":"p","html":"As the semiconductor industry pushed to produce devices that are more complex in structure, smaller in size, and containing several different materials, measuring nanoscale structures for this purpose became fundamentally important. A saying that may be familiar to most engineers, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t build it” is also true in nanofabrication. Consequently, there are several different techniques and instruments used to understand the different nanoscale properties of a matter. While metrology in most cases refers to measuring a system or material’s physical dimensions, metrology techniques are used to evaluate every aspect of a system, including its electrical, optical, mechanical, chemical, and even atomic structural properties. In this post, we limit the scope of the discussion to the measurement of physical dimensions and reserve other metrology techniques for later discussions."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_ee6dcaa3adc04abd94caa066aa9f4ab2.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Measuring the topography of system is the most common form of metrology, as a typically nanofabrication process involves multiple patterning, adding (deposition), and removing (etching) material steps. Several specialized microscopes such as atomic force microscope (AFM), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and super-resolution optical microscopy are just a few of many metrology techniques that are utilized for this task."},{"type":"p","html":"AFM allows the generation of high-speed topographic images with sub-nanometer resolution. In AFM, a silicon cantilever tip with a radius of a few nanometers acts as a probe. The tip is scanned across a surface with an applied force (see diagram in above image). Changes in the surface topography cause the cantilever beam to flex as it moves across the features. These nanoscale movements are detected by measuring the deflection of an aligned laser off the end of the cantilever tip, as measured by an array of photodiodes. This is then translated in software to topological values, producing an image like the one shown above."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_6cee209d082342c49244bf71dda9b5cf.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Just like AFM, SEM can be used to measure the shape, size and topography of nanoscale structures. Additionally, it can also characterize the chemical composition of the sample if configured with the appropriate detectors. SEM uses a focused beam of electrons to evaluate structures on the surface of the material. A high energy electron beam scans the surface of the sample, generating scattered and emitted energy at various levels as a result of this interaction. Various detectors spatially measure this energy, providing information about the surface topography and composition. Below is an example image produced by SEM, showing the microstructure of a silica gel."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_d0c2631a243e49d596e1d1db2f4dfe37.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Although optical microscopy has been around for centuries scientists have only recently discovered super-resolution methods that can allow optical methods to extend into nanoscale structures, including the use of advanced post processing algorithms. While still lagging in resolution when compared to AFM and SEM, optical microscopy allows for quick and larger area inspections, which are also critical to any fabrication process flow, as shown in the image below."},{"type":"p","html":"Another critical type of metrology is known as profilometry. AFM is a type of profilometry, which are techniques used to extract topographical or thickness data from a surface. While AFM is typically used to give 3D information, often, quick 2D measurements of etched or deposited films are needed, to confirm a target thickness has been achieved. Stylus profilometry is the most often used, again utilizing a cantilever tip that is rastered along a surface, measuring the tip deflection to quantify step height changes on a surface. Optical profilometry is also used for the same purpose, however this time utilizing optical reflection and interference effects to measure surface height differences."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_c6e8b26f23dc487199677fda5b8b9b49.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Advances in metrology have enabled several decades of incredible nanoscale materials and device fabrication development. However, as devices continue to shrink, resolution, accuracy, and capabilities of current metrology instrumentation are being pushed to their limits. In particular, as new nanoscale device technologies move into commercial products, higher throughput and high reliable techniques will need to be developed."},{"type":"p","html":"Metrology is often an over looked process component in nanofabrication, but without it, all lithography, etching and deposition (see upcoming article) steps would be flying blind and would be impossible to maintain accurate and repeatable results. As the field moves forward, considerable research and development efforts will be needed to advanced nanometrology techniques, enabling new technologies and wide scale production."}]},{"slug":"nanofabrication-series-etching","oldPath":"/post/nanofabrication-series-etching","title":"Nanofabrication Series: Etching","date":"2021-06-11","author":"Alara Sedef Tuncer","category":"Nanofabrication Series","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_178e3c637ffb4d20b8047f3e2280139c.jpg","width":1344,"height":756},"excerpt":"If you’ve been following along with our blog series, then you may know that etching is one of the major steps in almost any nanofabrication process. In our previous post, we described photolithography as a means of…","readingMinutes":5,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"If you’ve been following along with our blog series, then you may know that etching is one of the major steps in almost any nanofabrication process. In our previous post, we described photolithography as a means of patterning a surface to create areas of a substrate that are covered with the photoresist polymer, known as masked areas, and areas that are open or exposed. After photolithography, an etching agent can be exposed to surfaces to create the desired three-dimensional nanostructures. The etching agent will wear off the unmasked areas while the areas that are covered by the resist will remain protected, this process in realm of nanofabrication is referred to as etching."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_dc490bbc856b4f538fc63e73b9aeb49b.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Etching is a crucial step used in nanofabrication to remove substrate or excess material that has been previously laid down onto the surface. The word originates from the Dutch “etsen” which means to engrave material surfaces with acids and from the German “ätzen” which means to eat away. Although it is difficult to say who was the first to use etching as a technique, jewelry was decorated this way during the time of Queen Cleopatra (69-30 BC) of Egypt. Centuries later, Swiss artist Urs Graf, became known as an early pioneer of etching, printing from iron plates in 1513. Today, scientists and engineers have applied the technique to create nano-scale patterns that make the many devices that enhance our daily lives."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_c17d03c0c71143219a80782ed5451cbb.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Within nanofabrication, there are two main types of etching: wet and dry etching. While both techniques only differ in terms of the etching agent used whether this is “liquid-phase” in wet etching or “plasma-phase” in dry etching, both types of etching involve the removal of layers from a masked surface to create three-dimensional transfer of nanostructures."},{"type":"p","html":"Wet etching relies purely on chemical reactions, as the substrate is submerged in the liquid etchant and can be sensitive to temperature and concentration of the etchant in the solution. The technique is easily scalable as all that is needed is more chemical etchant to accommodate larger or several substrates. Given that the process is driven by chemical reactions, the wet etchants etch isotopically, or in all directions at equal rates. The resultant profiles then are generally rounded, etching both vertically and horizontally. Unfortunately, this horizontal etching sacrifices some feature resolution, however process engineers at times utilize this isotropic nature to undercut features by design."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_32cf5539844d4e8193bde92b16576501.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"$23d"},{"type":"p","html":"Speaking of etch rates, what is it? The etch rate is the rate of material removed by an etchant. It is imperative to control the amount of material removed, in order to maintain design specifications of a device process. Without knowing the rate of removal, exposing the etching agent to the substrate for too long will result in wearing off too much material while leaving the etching agent for too short will result in too little material being removed. It’s important to know the etch rates for all the materials in the system, especially for the materials you’re not looking to remove (the masking layers) so that you can estimate the maximum time you can expose the material to the etching agent before damage can occur to these regions."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_08267c2ca48f47e9b254adc7c4852e62.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Selectivity is the ratio of the etch rate of the different materials involved in the reaction (initial material and the film/photoresist being used as the masking layer). Selectivity will determine how deep the etching agent can go in the material. High etch selectivity, when the etch rate of the mask is lower when compared to the film, allows the film exposed to be worn away at a higher rate than the mask that is covering it and this is normally desired."},{"type":"p","html":"Considering these parameters, it’s not that surprising that not all materials are suitable to be used in this technique. According to the Center for Nanoscale Systems at Harvard University, silicon, diamond, and category II-V compounds have properties suitable for dry etching, in which case etchant agents can be electron, ion, or photon beams that can dissolve the unmasked surfaces. For wet etching processes, several acids such as hydrofluoric acid, nitric acid, and acetic acid are commonly used as the etchant agent for silicon."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_f70358e45bd843edb9a7348d6e396721.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"As mentioned previously, directionality of an etch is a critical parameter in selecting which etch technique to use. There are times when a perfectly anisotropic or vertical etch profile is required and times when an undercut of secondary material is desired. In the first case, one would choose a dry technique, either using a beam of ions or a version of the reactive ion etching technique mentioned. More advanced RIE techniques have been developed over the years, such as deep reactive ion etching (DRIE), to yield incredibly high aspect ratio features. In the second case, one might choose to use a purely chemical process to etch, as with a wet etch or a dry chemical process to purposely etch both vertically and horizontally."},{"type":"p","html":"Nanofabrication scientists and engineers have a multitude of etching techniques that are available to choose from to produce the most desired etch profile for given material and device requirements."}]},{"slug":"nanofabrcation-series-photolithography","oldPath":"/post/nanofabrcation-series-photolithography","title":"Nanofabrcation Series: Photolithography","date":"2021-06-03","author":"Alara Sedef Tuncer","category":"Nanofabrication Series","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_01a34c4209ed4fe788650d6fe82a7f2a.jpg","width":1344,"height":756},"excerpt":"Have you ever wondered how your computer or phone can store so much information into such a compact space? As we discussed in our previous blog post, scientists and engineers use a process known as nanofabrication to…","readingMinutes":4,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Have you ever wondered how your computer or phone can store so much information into such a compact space? As we discussed in our previous blog post, scientists and engineers use a process known as nanofabrication to create the billions of tiny transistors that make up the ones and zeros that translate to computations and displayed data in our electronic devices."},{"type":"p","html":"Modern day microchips and microprocessors found within your electronic device are usually made using nanolithography—a molecular printing and nanofabrication technique that allows the modification of material surfaces. These structures can have the lateral dimension ranging from the size of 10’s of atoms to 100’s of nanometers (nm). For reference, the width of a single human hair is about 100,000 nm signifying the value of lithography in nanofabrication to manufacture compact devices."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_445c69dd9c544629b806e563aca47bcb.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"The word “nanolithography” comes from the combination of three Greek words: “nano” (small), “lithos” (stone), and “grapho” (to write), to produce the literal translation of “small writing on stone.” Its literal meaning is consistent with the utilization of the technique—to modify the surfaces of materials at a nanoscale."},{"type":"p","html":"$23e"},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_dc658fa4f83d4e769ec5ad8f1ddc59ec.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Processing nano-structures using photolithography is quite similar to developing photographic films. The material surface or substrate is uniformly coated with a thin UV sensitive polymer, known as a photoresist. The coated substrate is subsequently cured. The photoresist is then covered with a photomask which acts as a stencil with opaque and transparent sections to outline the desired structures. Next, the open areas are uniformly exposed to UV light, leading them to chemically change their structural and chemical integrity. The now exposed photoresist is then soaked in a developer solution. Depending on the type of photoresist selected, the exposed photoresist areas will dissolve away in the developer, while the unexposed areas remain (known as a positive photoresist) or in the case of a negative photoresist, the exposed photoresist areas will remain, while the unexposed areas dissolve away. In both cases, the resulting substrate is now patterned with areas covered and uncovered with photoresist."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_be323e13d2aa4561b9427094700fcae5.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Using the photoresist as a mask to only effect the exposed areas, material is subsequently either added to surface via thin-film deposition or removed via an etching process. In the method described here, the features on the surface are a direct one-to-one translation in size (no reduction). Restricted by the diffraction of light, this technique is typically limited to approximately 500 nm using UV light. Modern photolithography is done using a technique known as projection photolithography. In this method, prior to reaching the photoresist, the light passing through the photomask passes through a series of lenses, shrinking the image and focusing it onto the substrate. In this way, along with using shorter wavelength light, modern photolithographic systems can produce features below 10 nm."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_1005b6ee10e64f44aadb5c7679ffd4db.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"$23f"},{"type":"p","html":"Nanolithography is just one of the nanofabrication techniques that has revolutionized science and engineering. With varying significant uses across almost every scientific and technological application space, this indispensable technique continues to advance, creating the next generation lithography techniques with more variety of uses and capabilities. In the continuation of this nanofabrication blog series, we will cover the additional complimentary processes needed to fully realize nano-structured devices."},{"type":"p","html":"About the Author: Alara Tuncer is a master’s student in NYU GSAS studying Biology. Aspiring to become a science writer, she is very interested in simplifying and translating complex scientific knowledge, theories and practices to a general audience to shape social and political conversations regarding science.
"},{"type":"p","html":"LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alara-sedef-tuncer-27b85312a/"}]},{"slug":"an-introduction-to-nanofabrication","oldPath":"/post/an-introduction-to-nanofabrication","title":"An Introduction to Nanofabrication","date":"2021-05-27","author":null,"category":"Nanofabrication Series","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_5df838e813e14843a9ee85ab69619972.jpg","width":1344,"height":756},"excerpt":"Nanotechnology might not be on the front of most peoples’ minds on a given day, but almost all of us not only come in contact with it on a daily basis, but have come to rely on it for our everyday activities. The…","readingMinutes":4,"body":[{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_5df838e813e14843a9ee85ab69619972.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Nanotechnology might not be on the front of most peoples’ minds on a given day, but almost all of us not only come in contact with it on a daily basis, but have come to rely on it for our everyday activities. The most obvious and ubiquitous example is in our cell phones, tablets and computers, as well as a host of other electronic smart devices. The current iPhone 12 for example has the Apple A14 Bionic chip with approximately 11.8 billion transistors, each with a minimum feature size of only 5 nanometers (nm)! Ok, so how big is a nanometer? The image below attempts to give you a sense of scale, but maybe the most relatable example is in the diameter of a human hair, which is approximately 100 millionth of a meter wide. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter (10^-9 m), so that means you could fit 100,000 nanometers in the diameter of one of your hairs."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_f5c696c8cc114120af0667af0f44c5d0.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"It’s a bit difficult to imagine, but using what is called Nanofabrication, we can design these devices in a computer program, decide what materials and dimensions we would like, and then proceed to fabricate them with nanometer resolution on mass scale. It is certainly without a doubt one of humanities most impressive technological accomplishments. In fact, the push by companies like Intel, IBM, AMD, and others to cram more and more transistors on a single chip is what lead to advances in nanotechnology and more specifically nanofabrication (see Moore’s Law for more details). More transistors mean more computational power and more memory for your device and as consumers, we have always had an unquenched thirst for faster, smaller, and smarter computers."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_6410a8e753674006a4023e2dc9fff4ea.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Nanotechnology is an ever-growing field, finding applications in almost every technological and product sector. It is also incredibly diverse in how structures and devices are made. Let us now make a distinction between two main methodologies in nanotechnology, bottom-up and top-down, however as the fields advance, the lines between the two are now blurring as integrative efforts are employed to overcome new scientific and technological challenges."},{"type":"p","html":"Bottom-up nanotechnology or nanoscience is typically carried out by chemists, biologists, and other scientists and engineers who specialize in forming nanostructures through chemical or biological reactions. These nanostructures are most often formed in solution phase and allow for large batch processing at scale. A few examples of bottom-up nanotechnology in everyday life are:"},{"type":"p","html":"Cosmetics and other body products. Different types of nanomaterials are employed in cosmetics including nanosomes, liposomes, fullerenes, solid lipid nanoparticles and more. For example, nanoparticles of zinc oxide and titanium dioxide are often used to help absorb or reflect harmful ultraviolet light in sunscreens."},{"type":"p","html":"Clothing and furniture. Silica nanoparticles are now used to help create waterproof or stain-proof clothing. Carbon nanofibers can be incorporated into furniture fabric to have the same effect, while also making furniture less flammable."},{"type":"p","html":"Medical treatments and diagnosis. Nanoparticles are now being used as drug delivery systems, gene therapy agents, enabling new rapid diagnostics, and much more. Bottom-up nanotechnology maybe holds its most promising and diverse applications in this space."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_0edf9a3891f043fca7f4293ade033897.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Top-down nanotechnology is where traditional nanofabrication lives. Again, most of these techniques were born from the push to shrink integrated circuits for computing; however, modern scientists and engineers now utilized these techniques across a broad area of application spaces. Not only does your current cell phone have a chip with nanofabricated processers, but also its memory and video chips, accelerometers used to sense motion, miniature microscale microphones used for talking and noise cancellation, tiny lasers and light sensors for facial recognition, tiny ultra-high resolution image detectors in your camera, pressure sensitive sensors for touch, organic light emitting diodes in your brilliant screens and much more! Beyond commercial devices nanofabricated devices are now finding their way into every inch of our life. A few examples are:"},{"type":"p","html":"Accelerometers and gyroscopes. These are micro and nanoscale devices that sense motion and forces, the same found in your phones, but also found in laptops to detect falls, cars to deploy airbags, planes to help with stabilization, your fitness trackers to sense your movement and several other places, including many new applications in the health care industry."},{"type":"p","html":"Lab-on-a-chip devices. Nanofabrication allows us to shrink an entire laboratory onto a tiny chip, with small micro and nanoscale channels to mix chemicals and evaluate reactions electrically or visually. One of the most powerful and recent is the Nanopore device allowing for the sequencing any DNA/RNA fragment in a portal device."},{"type":"p","html":"Nanophotonic devices. Nanofabrication allows us to make structures on the same scale as visible light, giving us the ability to manipulate light in unique ways. For example, more efficiently extracting light from LED materials, trapping light in thin films for better solar cells or sensing devices, and focusing light to make ultra-thin and light optical lenses."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_a1a76f3cc52f41828a3baf6df564751b.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"For modern day devices, nanofabrication is a complex series of steps carried out sequentially by sophisticated equipment in cleanroom facilities. To give you a better sense of how this is accomplished, this post will be followed by additional blog posts, each focusing on one of the main steps involved the process, of which include photolithography, etching, deposition, and metrology. Nanofabrication techniques are key to unlocking a whole new generation of devices that have the power to help improve the lives of ourselves and others. Come learn more about it with us!"},{"type":"p","html":"About the Author: Jacob Trevino, PhD. (https://www.jacobtrevino.com/)"}]},{"slug":"meet-dr-yuan-xue-staff-scientist-thinc-core-facility-at-aertc-stony-brook-university","oldPath":"/post/meet-dr-yuan-xue-staff-scientist-thinc-core-facility-at-aertc-stony-brook-university","title":"Meet Dr. Yuan Xue: Staff Scientist, ThINC Core Facility at AERTC, Stony Brook University ","date":"2021-03-08","author":"Shruti Sharma","category":"Community Spotlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/a13670_98bff4839a544a9190f781b7d66a1530.jpg","width":1800,"height":1350},"excerpt":"Updated: Mar 8, 2021","readingMinutes":4,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Updated: Mar 8, 2021"},{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the greater NYC area to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Dr. Yuan Xue, a Staff Scientist at the ThINC (Thermomechanical & Imaging Nanoscale Characterization) Core Facility of the Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center (AERTC) located at Stony Brook University."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/a13670_98bff4839a544a9190f781b7d66a1530.jpg","width":1800,"height":1350,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us a little bit about where you are from."},{"type":"p","html":"I’m from a city called Pingdingshan in central China. In Chinese, Pingdingshan means “a mountain with a flat top”. When I was little, one of our frequent family weekend getaways has been a trail with ~1000 staircases built on that mountain. Pingdingshan also has an ancient name called Yingcheng, which means “the eagle city”. This name was used more than two thousand years ago when it was a small country, rules by the royal name Ying."},{"type":"p","html":"Pingdingshan has extensive mineral resources and is a small city in China where the pace of life there is slow and peaceful. We have farmlands, mountains, and hot springs. I’ve always loved our family trips to the mountains for sightseeing and delicious local foods, followed by relaxation at the hot springs."},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us about your experience of working as a staff scientist at ThINC Core Facility. How did you decide to choose this career trajectory?"},{"type":"p","html":"I started working with ThINC when I was a graduate student. At first, I was sending in samples for my own experiments. Since ThINC has instrumentation that was critical for my Ph.D. research, I quickly become a frequent visitor and got the chance to become a trained user, which eventually lead me to work here."},{"type":"p","html":"I love performing experiments. My mother is a middle school physics teacher, and since I was young, she taught me how to perform simple experiments. The hands-on experience, the delicate steps (for a first grader) to carry out, and the parameters to play with, all of this fascinates me to this day. Thus, when I received training from Dr. Simon Chang, I expressed my interest and he not only trained me for standard operations but also taught me the principle theory and design behind all the instruments. I am really appreciative of the mentoring Dr. Chang provided me and through these intensive sessions, I learned how much potential an instrument could have."},{"type":"p","html":"When I was graduating, the staff scientist position opened up at ThINC and I jumped on the opportunity. I have had the opportunity to work with researchers from different fields and industries throughout graduate school and now. This has further broadened my understanding and interest in instrumentation science."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/a13670_12c06cbf8d044cd989f6e9ddc5241dc2.png","width":645,"height":1024,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us more about your educational journey. Where did you complete your undergraduate and graduate degrees? What was your particular graduate research on? What are some potential applications of your research?"},{"type":"p","html":"I did my undergrad at Nanjing University of Science and Technology where I majored in Wielding Engineering. Through this discipline, I was introduced to the fascinating concept of structure-property relationships in materials, i.e. how properties of materials could have a huge impact on mechanical properties and thereby materials design, and vice versa. This led me to take a step further and I came to the US to study mechanical engineering and received my master’s degree at Stevens Institute of Technology. Then I went to Stony Brook University and received my Ph.D. in Materials Science and Chemical Engineering, where I carried out research on polymeric materials and their nanocomposites."},{"type":"p","html":"The overarching goal of my Ph.D. research was to design biodegradable flame retardant polymer composites and blends with desired physical properties through polymer interface/surface engineering. Comparing to one component flame retardant polymers, multi-component systems show excellent physical and/or chemical properties that couldn’t be reached by either component alone. It’s also cost-efficient and could be applied to recycled polymeric materials. Through surface/interface engineering, polymers and polymer composites can be designed with desired properties at a lower cost. My research has practical applications in industrial flame retardant polymer composite design, and potentially broadens the usage of recycled polymers. For example, I’ve developed an innovative approach to minimize the content of flame retardant fillers in Ethylene-vinyl Acetate matrix, with desired flame-retardant and mechanical properties that can be applied as cable sheathing."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/a13670_73e79c97a864423486750591a69dd437.jpg","width":1350,"height":1800,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Has COVID-19 affected how you do science? Has this experience surprised you in any positive way?"},{"type":"p","html":"COVID has definitely made many things more complicated, and several activities take much longer, especially when the research involves collaboration. With many people working remotely, virtual meetings have become a significant part of our work. Like many people, I might have gone through the “Zoom fatigue” phase but Zoom feels like a new norm of our life."},{"type":"p","html":"One thing I have learned from virtual meetings is that I need to work on my communication skills for efficient and precise conversations. Of course, they are important for face-to-face conversations as well, but without the help of facial expressions, eye contact and hand/body gestures, it is harder to catch people’s attention. Hopefully, I am making progress in every meeting."},{"type":"p","html":"What do you do for fun outside of your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"Crafting, reading books, watching shows, and working out with my cat. I love to travel so when it’s safe enough, I am looking forward to traveling again."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/a13670_16cad6771c6446ed997dcd7792cd868d.jpg","width":1800,"height":1350,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"If you could go back in time, what advice will you give to your younger self?"},{"type":"p","html":"You can do it, and please take polymer chemistry!"},{"type":"p","html":"LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuan-yvonne-xue-ph-d-bb2719b4/"}]},{"slug":"meet-dr-anibal-boscoboinik-staff-scientist-cfn-brookhaven-national-lab","oldPath":"/post/meet-dr-anibal-boscoboinik-staff-scientist-cfn-brookhaven-national-lab","title":"Meet Dr. Anibal Boscoboinik: Staff Scientist, CFN, Brookhaven National Lab ","date":"2021-03-03","author":"Shruti Sharma","category":"Community Spotlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/a13670_d1bb9b81775648d7be3a428a756a9964.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200},"excerpt":"Updated: Mar 4, 2021","readingMinutes":8,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Updated: Mar 4, 2021"},{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the greater NYC area to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Dr. Anibal Boscoboinik, a Staff Scientist at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), Brookhaven National Lab."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/a13670_d1bb9b81775648d7be3a428a756a9964.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us a little bit about where you are from."},{"type":"p","html":"I am from a small town called Villa Dolores in the Cordoba province in Argentina. It is located in a quiet and relaxing valley called “Traslasierra”, by some hills with rivers and dams. This place has a unique vibe during the summer. People are warm and friendly there."},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us about your professional journey so far. What were the critical turning points in your career and any lessons learned that you would like to highlight). How did you figure out you wanted to study surface science?"},{"type":"p","html":"$240"},{"type":"p","html":"The most important lesson that I have learned is that you must surround yourself with great people. This is important socially and professionally. Networks are critical for life and work. New ideas always come from stimulating conversations with others, and you would not have these conversations if you don’t have interesting people around you. The organization that funded my stay in Germany (Alexander von Humboldt Foundation) has this concept very clear, and they always emphasize that they “support people, not projects”. They also organize many social events to bring together the people they support, and that has worked very well for them, with 55 Nobel Prize winners among their fellows."},{"type":"p","html":"How did I figure out I wanted to study surface science? I don’t know if I purposely chose surface science; that was the path that life took me through because of the people I knew, and I liked it once I was already there. It is fascinating to picture structures and processes down to the atomic scale using the tools we have in surface science. The possibility of using well-defined nanostructures, and understand them down to the last atom, makes this approach also a great way to use in complement with theoretical methods."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/a13670_2a53841c479d4e4ba4acde13ca12ed45.png","width":1731,"height":1155,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What group are leading now, and what is the group’s overall focus? Can you tell me about some potential future applications for your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"I supervise a group of young scientists at the CFN, and we study two-dimensional nanoporous materials. Most of our focus is on silicates and aluminosilicates, which are made of the three most abundant elements in the earth’s crust (O, Si, Al). We do fundamental work trying to understand how these materials are structured depending on how we synthesize them. Once we understand their structure, we used them to gain insights into how small molecules interact with them. Understanding these interactions can provide guidelines for the design of practical materials for specific applications. Some potential future applications of new materials based on our work include more efficient inexpensive heterogeneous catalysts, membranes for separation, coatings for corrosion protection, and systems for trapping gases."},{"type":"p","html":"What Is the next big project you are planning to undertake?"},{"type":"p","html":"It is hard to know what will come next, but a couple of things we are doing that I am very excited about are developing methodologies for trapping noble gases in relation to nuclear energy applications (patent submitted), and the preparation of new thin silicate materials by delamination of layered ones, that can be later used to make useful heterostructures. These two areas could really have a societal impact. Another exciting emerging area that is starting to sound very appealing is that of driving catalytic systems into more active or selective regimes using periodic stimuli; this has been referred to as “dynamic catalysis” in the literature."},{"type":"p","html":"Do you collaborate with groups in the Greater NYC area? How is it complementary and important to your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"We collaborate with various groups working on nanomaterials, mostly related to catalysis applications at universities such as Columbia, Princeton, NYU, Stony Brook, and Yale. Many of the groups we collaborate with are attracted by the freely available cutting-edge instrumentation and expert staff we have at our nanocenter, and often our research interests intersect. That is the case for example in our collaboration with Eric Altman at Yale, who also works on 2D-silicates and 2D-zeolite related structures as model systems for heterogeneous catalysts. We are very lucky to be in an area like this one, with such a high density of great research institutions that can interact and brew new ideas."},{"type":"p","html":"Has COVID-19 affected how you do science? Has this experience surprised you in any positive way?"},{"type":"p","html":"This has been a very tough year for many people, and I feel grateful that my family is in good health. On the science side, the situation has forced us to be more organized and coordinate our activities better to maintain social distancing when working in the lab. I am particularly disorganized by nature, so this has been a learning experience. Overall, we have adapted quite well, and the improved organization might have even translated into one of our most productive years. Since we work from home about 50% of the time, the commute time has been significantly reduced. Reducing the number of in-person meetings has also saved time but at the expense of also reducing social interactions. This is what I miss the most, talking to people in person and with no masks. Conversations with people are more enjoyable when I can see their facial expressions. Hopefully, we can have a bit party this summer to compensate."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/a13670_ed26b80c232b4d11bf21634b8dbbf6c7.png","width":1800,"height":1350,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"You are a very strong advocate for early-career scientists as well as STEM outreach. Tell us a bit about your involvement with various organizations (ASAP, BWIS, IWD, others) are you involved with, what’s their mission, why it’s important to you, and what you do for them? Any stories you want to share about the role and importance of mentorship in supporting women and early career researchers in STEM."},{"type":"p","html":"$241"},{"type":"p","html":"Since many of our biases are internalized during our formation years, it is very important to promote equal opportunity in STEM within the younger population. I was very lucky that the first PhD student to graduate with me, Dr. Nusnin Akter, was very active in this area, and got me involved in some of her work encouraging women in high school to participate in STEM activities. This was very inspiring. By the way, BWIS always finds the best speakers for the workshops and lectures they organize. They are always excellent. Highly recommended."},{"type":"p","html":"What do you do for fun outside of your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"I play soccer with friends when I can. The Brookhaven lab has a team, and we play in the second division of the Suffolk County over-30 years-old league. We are not very good, but we have fun. Sometimes I play chess as well, also in the mediocre range. Something else that is a lot of fun lately is to (safely) do experiments with my kids at home. They are 8 and 4, and they always come up with amazing extra ideas and interesting thoughts when we do experiments."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/a13670_200d48e4c6c14a2e95818bee476f0c69.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"If you could go back in time, what advice will you give to your younger self?"},{"type":"p","html":"Enjoy every minute, even the terrible ones, you can always find a positive angle to look at things. Make mistakes, as many as possible while you are young, and learn from them. Mistakes get more expensive as you get older. Be respectful and thoughtful; be aware of how your actions affect others. Value the good people around you and keep them close."},{"type":"p","html":"What advice/suggestions would you give to early-career scientists in the nanoscience field?"},{"type":"p","html":"Nanoscience is fascinating. It can, and it will change the world. I know that. You can be part of that change. You just have to work hard and enjoy it. If you learn to enjoy it, the hard work gets lighter and more rewarding. Then, at some point, work and fun will get all mixed up."},{"type":"p","html":"LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jorge-anibal-boscoboinik-6aa85123/"}]},{"slug":"meet-dr-maria-maragkou-senior-editor-for-nature-materials","oldPath":"/post/meet-dr-maria-maragkou-senior-editor-for-nature-materials","title":"Meet Dr. Maria Maragkou: Senior Editor for Nature Materials","date":"2021-02-02","author":"Frederick Pearsall","category":"Community Spotlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_9a4404f035bf48a198c5a9545991723c.jpg","width":1344,"height":756},"excerpt":"Nanotech NYC and the Nanotech Alliance sit down with professionals from different areas of the scientific and nanotechnology world, to explore topical subjects of interest for the Nanotech NYC community through the…","readingMinutes":11,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC and the Nanotech Alliance sit down with professionals from different areas of the scientific and nanotechnology world, to explore topical subjects of interest for the Nanotech NYC community through the lens of an expert. Today we speak with Dr. Maria Maragkou, Senior Editor at Nature Materials, to discuss the challenges and opportunities of a career as a science editor, the transition outside of academic research from a Ph.D. degree, and some of the defining moments of her professional journey."},{"type":"p","html":"Dr. Maragkou earned an MEng in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Patras, Greece, and a Ph.D. in physics in 2010 from the University of Southampton, UK. She is currently based in the London office."},{"type":"p","html":"Thanks to Francesco Lavini for the help in drawing up the questions and editing the article."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_9a4404f035bf48a198c5a9545991723c.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us about your professional journey so far."},{"type":"p","html":"I studied electrical and computer engineering in Greece and then moved to the UK to work on the physics of exciton-polaritons in semiconductor quantum wells as a spectroscopist for my Ph.D. I then worked on quantum optics with individual quantum dots as a postdoc - I spent two years in Universidad Autonoma de Madrid and two in the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. In 2014 I moved back to the UK to be a Locum Editor for Nature Photonics - it was a maternity cover position - and then in 2015, I moved to Nature Materials where I took over all the manuscripts related to photonics, plasmonics, phononics. And I am still there!"},{"type":"p","html":"What does a normal working day look like for you?"},{"type":"p","html":"My day begins with checking emails whilst drinking my morning coffee; a good day starts with an email saying “Yes, I agree to review this paper”. Then I have a never-ending to-do list, so I take a pick. A large part of our job is assessing manuscripts and deciding whether they fit the scope and standards of Nature Materials. As such, I always have new submissions waiting to be assessed or in need of reviewers. There are revised manuscripts responding to the issues raised by the reviewers, and authors requesting we reconsider a negative decision -either before or after peer-review. As you can see, manuscripts need attention at different moments during their time with us."},{"type":"p","html":"$242"},{"type":"p","html":"So, there is no “normal” day, every day I do and learn something different!"},{"type":"p","html":"What drove you to start as a science editor? What were the key factors that drove your decisions?"},{"type":"p","html":"It was mostly curiosity I would say; publishing is such an important part of our training in academia and yet to me, it felt like a black box. I hadn’t interacted with any editors in person to get some insight or advice on science publishing, and as is still the case for many I believe, I didn’t really understand the criteria behind the editorial assessments. I admit I was starting to get a bit tired of life in the lab and I was looking for a break. My position at Nature Photonics was meant to be for 6 months so I thought it was a great opportunity to see what happens on the other side and then return to academia with all this inside information! I was for example positively impressed when I realized that our journals have no hidden agenda in terms of the topic selection. But I really enjoyed my time there and I was lucky to be able to find a permanent position in that same environment."},{"type":"p","html":"How was the process of becoming an editor? What advice would you give someone who wants to become an editor like yourself, for their job application?"},{"type":"p","html":"The process is very straightforward. There is an opening for a position related to your expertise, asking for a CV, cover letter and an essay on a particular topic, usually a research area of your choice that you deem exciting - preferably not the area you work in. I think at the time I wrote about 2D materials."},{"type":"p","html":"Then, the candidates that are shortlisted receive a few manuscripts to assess at home within a week. The final step is the interview face to face. The first part is pretty much standard for any job: related to your career path, aspirations, interest in scientific publishing and the workings of the journal. The second part is a bit scarier, the in-situ assessment of a couple of manuscripts in a limited amount of time: should it go out to review or not? I remember I had enough time to just read the papers and maybe take some notes. The point is to test the reasoning and argumentation behind the decision, in real life, there are no time constraints in assessing a paper. We take as long as it takes to make an informed and justified decision."},{"type":"p","html":"A good editor is a science junkie, they love reading and writing about science in the broader sense, they love learning new things. It is important that this universal interest, beyond the narrow topic of our training as Ph.D. students or even postdocs is being reflected in the application."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_6a19c394282545d0b400574d296fa4bf.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What do you feel are the biggest challenges in approaching and pursuing a career as a science editor?"},{"type":"p","html":"The transition from researcher to an editor at the beginning is rather brutal, we go from knowing a narrow topic relatively well to assessing manuscripts that cover a significantly broader scope. But assessing is a complex process, it includes understanding the paper, understanding the literature, and effectively acting as a proxy for the community. That is no easy feat in general, and it is even harder at the beginning of an editorial career. The learning curve is extremely steep, but luckily there is a team of skilled editors around to help and guide through this transition."},{"type":"p","html":"$243"},{"type":"p","html":"What are the aspects you find most rewarding and entertaining?"},{"type":"p","html":"More experienced editors often describe our career path as going from talking in-depth about one thing to talking superficially about many. Indeed, we are exposed to excellent and interesting work from so many different fields, and it is very exciting navigating different communities and observing how similar or different they are. In fact, I very much enjoy being so close to so many smart researchers and beautiful science without all the difficult aspects of academic life. I also love the diversity and flexibility of our role, we can focus on research papers, we can do more outreach by organizing seminars and workshops, we can explore new topics and new fields by commissioning content for the journal. All this freedom in shaping the role and the journal in some way makes our job the complete opposite of routine."},{"type":"p","html":"My favorite activity is of course receiving reviewers’ comments on papers, I am always curious to see how the community feels about them. Receiving positive feedback in line with my initial assessment is very rewarding, almost like a pat on the shoulder, “good work Maria”!"},{"type":"p","html":"What is something in your career journey that holds a special place in your memory?"},{"type":"p","html":"That is a tough question. I have a lot of good memories from academia and publishing, and most importantly many good friends all over the world. I also vividly remember many collaborations on papers and editorial projects with other colleagues from the Nature journals."},{"type":"p","html":"$244"},{"type":"p","html":"I recently realized that companies are looking to work on the issues highlighted by Harry Atwater - in fact, I saw a job opening on this exact topic. And the Science Museum in London is covering the Starshot Initiative in their latest exhibition as well as the work that ESA is doing towards building labs and living spaces on the Moon. It really gives me great pleasure to feel and be part of something bigger, and to see action follow concepts and ideas that I helped showcase in the journal."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_b55311a94e584255ae431d44bb6504f5.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"You are currently pursuing an Executive MBA degree. What drove you to enter such a program after obtaining your Ph.D., and how do you foresee this advancing your career goals?"},{"type":"p","html":"I wrote my Ph.D. thesis in 2010 and I really enjoyed the process. It’s been 10 years since then and I am feeling nostalgic about it, so I thought I’d try something a little bit different this time! I’m kidding, it was just curiosity again. An MBA is not essential to my role as an editor or my interactions with the research community. I do however work in a more corporate environment now, and after some years, and especially after the merger of Springer with the Nature Publishing Group, I started realizing that there are many aspects about how to run a business that I don’t know or understand very well, but impact my job. I also wanted to see what happens outside the academic bubble, which surrounds me in a professional and personal context - my husband is an academic as well. And I can tell you, it is very different! The way of thinking, or working, of interacting, is very different from academia."},{"type":"p","html":"For most the hardest part of an MBA is essentially going back to school: taking notes, reading, writing assignments. But not for me, I never stopped doing that. What I mostly struggle with are group assignments. Although there is a lot of collaboration in academia, the mindset and way of thinking are more or less universal, so the process is quite smooth. I am also used to working a lot alone, either as a Ph.D. student or even now as an editor. Through the MBA, I am learning from scratch how to communicate with people from all sorts of professional backgrounds that speak a totally different language. It is very challenging and time-consuming, but also very interesting."},{"type":"p","html":"What general advice can you give Ph.D. students who would like to pursue a career as an editor? Is there anything they can do while still in graduate school?"},{"type":"p","html":"Good communication skills are the backbone of what we do and in particular explaining complex ideas to non-experts. This is not always obvious as we mostly interact with people with similar or adjacent backgrounds. So, practice as much as you can, explain your work to your grandmother, explain an interesting paper to a friend with a non-scientific background, participate in outreach activities with children. Attend scientific outreach events to see what it is like to be on the receiving end of such explanations, try to understand which communication ways work and which do not."},{"type":"p","html":"And of course, read! Devote some time every week to read the new issue of Nature or Science or any other journal or magazine you like, they offer so much remarkable content beyond your remit. When reading a paper within your discipline, set aside those that are well-written, that manages to tell a beautiful and complete story – and follow the same format when writing your own. And especially if you are a non-native speaker, reading books in English - fiction, non-fiction, history, anything you like - is the best way to improve your vocabulary and editing skills in general."},{"type":"p","html":"If you could go back in time, what advice would you give to your younger self?"},{"type":"p","html":"In life, it is important to have choices. I was lucky enough to have a relatively comfortable life in Greece and then live in various countries as an academic nomad. But every choice we make puts our life on a certain path, and the lives we could have had if another choice had prevailed are gone. So, make sure you choose as wisely as possible. Ask for advice, gather as much information as possible, take your time if you can and really think about your move. And I would also repeat the wise words of my mum and Baz Luhrmann – wear sunscreen!"},{"type":"p","html":"LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mmaragkoy/"},{"type":"p","html":"Nature Materials: https://www.nature.com/nmat/"},{"type":"p","html":"Editors: Frederick Pearsall and Francesco Lavini
"}]},{"slug":"meet-dr-matteo-rini-deputy-editor-for-american-physical-society","oldPath":"/post/meet-dr-matteo-rini-deputy-editor-for-american-physical-society","title":"Meet Dr. Matteo Rini: Deputy Editor for American Physical Society","date":"2021-02-02","author":"Francesco Lavini","category":"Community Spotlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_51566a4f399a4feaa577743a61a35667.jpg","width":1344,"height":756},"excerpt":"Nanotech NYC and the Nanotech Alliance sit down with professionals from different areas of the scientific and nanotechnology world, to explore topical subjects of interest for the Nanotech NYC community through the…","readingMinutes":5,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC and the Nanotech Alliance sit down with professionals from different areas of the scientific and nanotechnology world, to explore topical subjects of interest for the Nanotech NYC community through the lens of an expert. Today we speak with Dr. Matteo Rini, Deputy Editor at the American Physical Society (APS), and former Policy Officer at the European Commission, to discuss the challenges and opportunities of a career as a science editor, the importance of Science Communication, and his involvement in science policies activities."},{"type":"p","html":"Dr. Rini holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Pavia and a Ph.D. in physics from the Humboldt University of Berlin."},{"type":"p","html":"Thanks to Haripriya Kannan for the help in drawing up the questions and editing the article."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_51566a4f399a4feaa577743a61a35667.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us about your professional journey so far."},{"type":"p","html":"I started out as an academic researcher, working in Italy, Germany, and the US, mostly on the application of lasers to study fast processes in materials and liquids. After my Ph.D. and ~5 years as a postdoc and researcher at Berkeley, I decided to work on a problem that I felt very urgent: communicating science to society and to policymakers. First, I worked in politics with the European Commission, focusing on energy and climate change. Then, my passion for research brought me back to a more scientific setting — now I am a writer and editor for the American Physical Society, in particular for the online magazine physics.aps.org. I am also keen on teaching and give tens of seminars around the world and regular classes at NYU."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_717282b87aa146f2971ca7b660ee7c6e.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What does a normal working day look like for you?"},{"type":"p","html":"No two days are alike! I spend time reading and looking for the most exciting science. And depending on the current articles, I interview scientists, visit labs, prepare visuals, and work with other writers and journalists. There is a lot of exploration and information gathering, and some calmer hours where I focus on writing."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_f9dfa969e06742459cad34f85d2f1315.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What drove you to start as a science editor? What were the key factors that drove your career pivot?"},{"type":"p","html":"I think the main factor is that I knew I’d like it. I’d like to mention that I am not a traditional editor in my current role at APS, who accepts submissions and sends out papers for review. I am mostly involved in communicating research, and the “editing” is a support to scientists who want to write more accessibly. What drew me to this career is my curiosity for many topics—beyond my field—and my passion for writing. I also think that it is an important duty—communicating science, which plays a key role in making science matter in our society."},{"type":"p","html":"How was the process of becoming an editor? What would the journals or organizations look for in an ideal application?"},{"type":"p","html":"There aren’t many jobs of this type, so the key thing is to find a way to start. I applied for a number of positions and received several offers and finally chose the APS. What do they look for? 1. A broad mindset, allowing you to explore many fields of science. 2. Great communication skills. 3. Some relevant experience. It doesn’t have to be much. Certainly, it helps to have been a reviewer. There are also a number of journals, like PLOS, that allow a scientist to act as an academic editor. I’d definitely recommend that if you are interested in exploring this career."},{"type":"p","html":"What do you feel are the biggest challenges in approaching and pursuing a career SciComm and as a science editor?"},{"type":"p","html":"There aren’t many positions available, so entering the field is a challenge. But once in, the experience one acquires opens up many paths for further development."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_66f97144ac6f448b90e82a48712fa3f1.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"And the aspects you find more rewarding and entertaining?"},{"type":"p","html":"Being in touch with some of the smartest people on this planet and learning about the frontiers of knowledge. But ultimately, writing compelling prose is really what matters to me most."},{"type":"p","html":"You have an impressive experience in multiple fields as a writer, editor, press-officer. Tell us some episodes that hold a special place in your career’s memory."},{"type":"p","html":"In research, I still remember very vividly when my first Science article was published. It was very rewarding to see all that effort in the lab being rewarded—until then, I hadn’t really believed that what I did was impactful. As an editor, I remember getting in touch with Stephen Hawking. It was unbelievable to be in touch with him directly. Also, I remember the day that I first saw a paper - several weeks before it was made public - on the discovery of gravitational waves. I hadn’t expected that that would occur in my lifetime, and it was amazing to help in communicating the result."},{"type":"p","html":"Your career is enriched by your interest and involvement in science policy activities. How does your experience in the field relate to your work as an editor? Do you feel that your editorial and writer role can help you in your quest to support the role of science in politics?"},{"type":"p","html":"I think the two fields have one important thing in common: communication. As scientists, we can’t live in an ivory tower and we have to motivate why what we do is important, beautiful and useful. So, the two paths are related, but the fields are very different. Politics is a very hierarchical environment, and often not a meritocratic one. Academia is much freer, although sometimes it feels less useful. There are beautiful sides to both, but academic freedom is incomparable."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_95c8bd5d9ec343da9bfae79013519e59.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What would you like to tell the Ph.D. students who want to pursue a career as a science editor? What are the steps that need to be taken to increase their chances of being an editor?"},{"type":"p","html":"I’d say, first of all, become a reviewer if possible. Second, try to explore options for getting some experience - journals like PLOS may offer that. Finally, keep your eyes open and try to establish connections with people working in different publications."},{"type":"p","html":"If you could go back in time, what advice will you give to your younger self?"},{"type":"p","html":"Just follow your instinct and passions, and don’t let other factors - ambition, money, sense of importance - get in the way of that"},{"type":"p","html":"LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matteo-rini-861a152/"},{"type":"p","html":"APS Online Journal: https://physics.aps.org/"},{"type":"p","html":"Editors: Francesco Lavini and Haripriya Kannan.
"}]},{"slug":"stem-phds-as-science-editors","oldPath":"/post/stem-phds-as-science-editors","title":"STEM PhDs as Science Editors","date":"2021-01-25","author":"Francesco Lavini","category":"Career Information","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_664e3fca648f45e8b1555a81db903c18.jpg","width":1344,"height":756},"excerpt":"Updated: Jan 28, 2021","readingMinutes":8,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Updated: Jan 28, 2021"},{"type":"p","html":"Every STEM Ph.D. student, regardless of their major or niche research subject, goes through the process of writing and publishing papers. While for some researchers writing, editing, or reviewing articles can be agonizing, for others it is a rewarding experience, that allows one to put into words, seal and validate months of hard work. If you fit this category and if you ever wondered what it's like to be on the other side of the publication process, you may want to consider a career as a science journal editor and hopefully find this article quite interesting."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_664e3fca648f45e8b1555a81db903c18.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"$245"},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_e17843407d88447692bd2a44191bfd54.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Besides the elevated ethical scope, STEM publishing is a $10 billion industry, whose market leaders such as Springer Nature and Elsevier are driving prestigious employment opportunities for doctorates and post-doctorates. There are multiple roles within an STEM publishing landscape, but most of them require a Ph.D. degree and high technical knowledge in the fields covered by the specific journal. Salary is a relatively strong point of the STEM editor career, with entry-level US salaries ranging between $50k and $80k, depending on the seniority level."},{"type":"p","html":"If at this point of the article you start to see your future self in the shoes of a science editor, but still wonder what a science editor exactly does, we asked two professionals in the field to share their insights on the outlook of such a career. Dr. Maria Maragkou, Senior Editor at Nature Materials, and Dr. Matteo Rini, Deputy Editor for American Physical Society (APS) help us navigate the science editor career and share their experience on the transition from a Ph.D. degree. You can find complete individual interviews in our blog session - links at the end of the article. Thanks to their testimony, we better understand the motivations that drove them towards this career pivot, the skills needed for succeeding as an editor, and the challenges and rewards of such a role."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_154d5c40065f4ea382273c032999783f.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What does a normal working day for an editor look like?"},{"type":"p","html":"The main role of a science editor is to oversee the entire publication life-cycle of a manuscript, from evaluating the significance of a submission to finalizing its publication. To this end, editors need to be constantly informed about the latest developments in their field of competence, make sure that the peer review process runs as smoothly and efficiently as possible, and build and maintain positive relationships with both authors and reviewers to ensure the quality of the published papers. There are a plethora of activities entrusted to the editors, and long daily to-do lists to keep track of. But both our interviewees assure us that this is part of the fun, as no two days are alike."},{"type":"p","html":"Maria: A large part of our job is assessing manuscripts and deciding whether they fit the scope and standards of our Journal. As such, I always have new submissions waiting to be assessed or in need of reviewers. There are revised manuscripts responding to the issues raised by the reviewers, and authors requesting we reconsider a negative decision. As you can see, manuscripts need attention at different moments during their time with us."},{"type":"p","html":"Matteo: I spend time reading and looking for the most exciting science. And depending on the current articles, I interview scientists, visit labs, prepare visuals, and work with other writers and journalists."},{"type":"p","html":"What drove you to start as an editor?"},{"type":"p","html":"Maria: It was mostly curiosity I would say. I wanted to explore what happens on the other side of the editorial process. Publishing is such an important part of our training in academia and yet to me it felt like a black box, as I didn’t really understand the criteria behind the editorial assessment."},{"type":"p","html":"Matteo: What drove me to this career are my curiosity for many topics beyond my field and my passion for writing. Even before jumping into this career, I knew I would have liked it."},{"type":"p","html":"What do you feel are the biggest challenges in approaching and pursuing a career as a science editor?"},{"type":"p","html":"The science editor career is not easy to approach and calls for significant commitment and effort. But in turn, it is extremely rewarding and attractive."},{"type":"p","html":"Maria: The transition from academic researcher to editor at the beginning is rather brutal, we go from knowing a narrow topic relatively well to evaluating manuscripts that cover a significantly broader scope. But the learning curve is extremely steep."},{"type":"p","html":"Matteo: There aren’t many positions available, so entering the field is a challenge. But once in, the experience one acquires opens up many paths for further development."},{"type":"p","html":"“With great power, there must also come great responsibility”. By facilitating the dissemination of scientific publications, editors don’t only have responsibilities towards their publishing company, but also act as a proxy for their community, being responsible for validating and fostering the developments in their field of competence."},{"type":"p","html":"Maria: Given the selectivity of Nature journals, editors in most cases are bearers of not positive news. That means that at any given moment there are many people that are unhappy with me, and often they let me know. It took me several years to not take such reactions personally."},{"type":"p","html":"And what are the aspects you find most rewarding and entertaining?"},{"type":"p","html":"While working to assess and disseminate academic production, science editors are always at the forefront of the broader scientific conversation and have the chance to witness the latest developments in their fields first-hand."},{"type":"p","html":"Maria: I very much enjoy being so close to so many smart researchers and beautiful science without all the difficult aspects of academic life. I also love the diversity and flexibility of our role. We can focus on research papers, we can do more outreach by organizing seminars and workshops, we can explore new topics and new fields by commissioning content for the journal. All this freedom in shaping the role and the journal makes our job the complete opposite of routine."},{"type":"p","html":"Matteo: Learning about the frontiers of knowledge and being in touch with some of the smartest people on this planet is exhilarating. As an editor, I remember getting in touch with Stephen Hawking. It was unbelievable to be in touch with him directly."},{"type":"p","html":"What are the skills necessary to succeed as a science editor?"},{"type":"p","html":"Maria: Good communication and social skills are the backbone of what we do, either when we interact with the utmost experts in the field or when explaining complex ideas to the broader audience. A good editor is a science junkie, who loves reading and writing about science in the broader sense and loves learning new things. It is important that this universal interest, beyond the narrow topic of our training as Ph.D. students, imbues our efforts as editors and reaches our readers."},{"type":"p","html":"Matteo’s viewpoint is also on the same line."},{"type":"p","html":"Matteo: What do the major publishers look for in prospective editors? 1. A broad mindset, allowing you to explore many fields of science. 2. Great communication skills."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_0a326e0c4b9b4b4cbf3f5066c397bde0.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Any practical tip you want to share with young researchers approaching a career as a science editor?"},{"type":"p","html":"Maria: Find a position that relates to your expertise and passions. Also, be constantly informed and read a lot! Devote some time every week to read the new issue of any journal you like, as they offer so much remarkable content beyond your remit. And especially if you are a non-native speaker, read books in English to improve your vocabulary and editing skills in general."},{"type":"p","html":"Matteo: First of all, it helps to act as a peer reviewer during your Ph.D. Second, try to explore options for getting a first-hand experience. There are a number of journals, like PLOS, that allow scientists to act as an academic editor."},{"type":"p","html":"On top of the precious advice suggested by our guests, a good starting point to explore opportunities in a career as a science editor is browsing publication platforms and resources, such as Web of Science and SCI Journal, that provide a list of top publishers and journals, and their impact. And as with any other job, don’t forget the importance of networking, and get in touch with other editors, to learn more about their job."},{"type":"p","html":"FIN"},{"type":"p","html":"If you are passionate about scientific breakthrough and the latest developments in your research field, but are tired of running simulations, analyzing microscopy images, or spending hours in the cleanroom, if you are fascinated by the academic publication system and want to directly contribute to its rigorous execution, then you may want to consider becoming a science editor. As highlighted by Maria and Matteo, this career entails a high level of responsibility and hard work, but it is also highly rewarding and dynamic. Given the high level of competency required, science editor is a role tailored for PhDs and postdocs. But it is also a quite competitive position and starting early on to build credit and qualification for the role, by acting as a peer reviewer, networking and exploring the editorial industry landscape, is definitely the best way for approaching a job application."},{"type":"p","html":"Full interviews with Dr. Maragkou and Dr. Rini will be published in the coming week at our dedicated blog session. Stay tuned! www.nanotechnyc.com/blog"},{"type":"p","html":"References"},{"type":"p","html":"World Economic Forum"},{"type":"p","html":"Springer Nature"},{"type":"p","html":"Elsevier"},{"type":"p","html":"Glassdor.com"},{"type":"p","html":"Web of Science"},{"type":"p","html":"SCI Journal"},{"type":"p","html":"About the Author"},{"type":"p","html":"Francesco Lavini is an Italian Ph.D. candidate in Material Engineering at NYU Tandon, with a research focus on the mechanical properties and industrial applications of advanced materials and graphene. He is putting his experience with academic, entrepreneurial, and student organizations at the service of Nanotech NYC mission, to build a more active and united nanotechnology community in New York City."},{"type":"li","html":"Career Information"}]},{"slug":"facility-highlight-thinc-core-facility-at-aertc-stony-brook-university","oldPath":"/post/facility-highlight-thinc-core-facility-at-aertc-stony-brook-university","title":"Facility Highlight: ThINC Core Facility at AERTC, Stony Brook University ","date":"2020-12-20","author":"Shruti Sharma","category":"Facility Highlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_84b02454ec42422780666804475828ef.jpg","width":1344,"height":756},"excerpt":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the greater NYC area to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Dr. Chung-Chueh (Simon)…","readingMinutes":7,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the greater NYC area to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Dr. Chung-Chueh (Simon) Chang, Project Director and Instrumentation Scientist at the ThINC (Thermomechanical & Imaging Nanoscale Characterization) Core Facility of the Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center located at Stony Brook University."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/a13670_0649ce9c54dd459fbe91b64090cbeabf.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Let’s start with you Dr. Chung-Chueh Chang. Tell us about your role at the Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center at Stony Brook University?"},{"type":"p","html":"Thermomechanical & Imaging Nanoscale Characterization (ThINC) is a comprehensive core facility located at the Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center (AERTC) at Stony Brook University, providing instrumentation and experts as resources for advancing materials research in engineering, chemistry, physical and life sciences. I am the Project Director and Instrumentation Scientist at ThINC, responsible for the day-to-day operations, maintenance, and compliance with local EH&S regulations."},{"type":"p","html":"Can you give us some insight into your educational and work history?"},{"type":"p","html":"I have over 14 years of technical experience in a broad range of materials research and thermal-mechanical characterization, including advanced microscopy imaging and relevant sample preparation and processing, including over 7 years of experience in laboratory management and environmental health and safety affairs. In addition to the technical expertise, in my many years as the Project Director and Instrumentation Scientist at ThINC, I have developed expertise in guiding and providing solutions to industrial and academic researchers for solving complex problems in materials development as well as assisting researchers in publishing in international journals, proposing research grants, and developing new techniques for their research. I received my PhD and MS in Materials Science and Engineering from Stony Brook University and a BS in Chemical and Materials Engineering from Taiwan."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/a13670_dae00846b9704b35a22c0bf87d9f9b32.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Can you describe what ThINC (Thermomechanical and Imaging Nanoscale Characterization) is and how it came to be?"},{"type":"p","html":"$246"},{"type":"p","html":"What are the facilities that fall under the ThINC umbrella?"},{"type":"p","html":"$247"},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/a13670_66bdd7caabf0438f9596ed87d6e071c7.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":"ThINC offers a suite of facilities including sample preparation, materials synthesis, imaging and chemical characterization facilities."},{"type":"p","html":"Can you give us an idea of who the users of the facilities typically are?"},{"type":"p","html":"Since we are a comprehensive core facility, our users are diverse in terms of sector focus as well as organizational origins. Our users come from start-ups, industry, research labs, as well as universities and, are from a very broad range of fields, including but not limited to pharmaceuticals, engineering, chemistry, physical and life sciences and agricultural technology. In the fiscal year 2019-2020, we have served over 100 researchers from different groups. About 80% of users are from Stony Brook University, Stony Brook Medicine and Stony Brook Dental School. About 20% of users are from local industries, mostly are startup companies. While ThINC kept its doors closed during the early days of the pandemic, we were able to reopen while following all safety measures for the protection of our users and staff, and have been advancing our mission to provide guidance and research opportunities to new and existing users."},{"type":"p","html":"Who maintains the facilities?"},{"type":"p","html":"ThINC team includes me and Dr. Yuan Xue interfacing directly with our users and focusing on data acquisition, analysis, and consulting as well as Dr. Shruti Sharma, Program Manager, focusing on user relations and ThINC's business development. I am primarily responsible for the smooth, safe, and sustainable operations of the instrumentations as well as providing adequate user training when requested. Dr. Yuan Xue, our experienced scientist, also supports the maintenance of facilities including safety, gas supplies and general supplies. Additionally, we also have service contracts for major advanced instruments maintenance to maximize operational time and minimize instrument downtime if a situation arises. As mentioned, if desired, ThINC is equipped to train users who wish to engage in long term research activities, allowing them to utilize the facilities independently once trained and authorized."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/a13670_e6cb4c139f1f488c908a3314aa5aac0e.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What is the process like for someone who wants to start using the facility?"},{"type":"p","html":"Our process is very simple, prospective users are welcome to contact us directly for inquiries through email (thinc@stonybrook.edu) or phone (631-216-7412). We encourage users to have an informative discussion with us to ensure the adequate assistance would be provided by ThINC. After the discussion, users will fill out the service request form for scheduling either sample measurements or training sessions. If a user is sending in samples, our typical turnaround time is 5-7 business days, barring any emergencies. The ThINC staff works with the users closely through the entire process from inquiries through data acquisition and analysis as needed. More information on available facilities and instrument capabilities can be found on our website: https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/thinc/index.php."},{"type":"p","html":"We also encourage the readers to follow us on social media for regular updates: LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram"},{"type":"p","html":"Can you give us a few examples of industrial development that the labs facilitate?"},{"type":"p","html":"We have served several local industrial institutions including start-ups for advancing their R&D and prototyping efforts. Here are a couple of examples that we have their permissions to disclose. Bettergy Corp., an energy materials and nanotechnology company developing advanced battery and nanopore engineered membrane technologies has taken advantage of our nano-imaging and characterization capabilities to move forward their SBIR project from Phase I to Phase II. Another example is SPOT SIZE, a startup company that provides high-quality carbon film-coated TEM grids for the TEM community. They have benefited in the development of their products by obtaining useful insights from TEM characterization. In the words of many of our users \"by providing access to expensive but crucial instrumentation as well as experienced staff scientists committed to helping the users, ThINC removes a major roadblock for small businesses and thrusts their R&D efforts\"."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/a13670_7ab62666f9524f9987b6f206e0ec3e4c.png","width":1800,"height":1507,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Can you give us some examples of academic research that is going on in the facilities?"},{"type":"p","html":"$248"},{"type":"p","html":"ThINC encourages interested people to initiate a conversation with our staff about how to send in samples, what is the right technique to study your products or jointly collaborate on grants and funding opportunities. Planning is underway for virtual open houses to begin in the first quarter of 2021."},{"type":"p","html":"ThINC Website: https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/thinc/"},{"type":"p","html":"ThINC Social Media: LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram"}]},{"slug":"meet-kendra-krueger-science-education-coordinator","oldPath":"/post/meet-kendra-krueger-science-education-coordinator","title":"Meet Kendra Krueger: Science Education Coordinator","date":"2020-11-17","author":"Roxana Piotrowska","category":"Research Highlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_dbf716b6fa75415d9d3f2617eef0e2b2.png","width":1344,"height":756},"excerpt":"Nanotech NYC and the Nanotech Alliance sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Kendra…","readingMinutes":7,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC and the Nanotech Alliance sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Kendra Krueger, Science Education Coordinator at the Advanced Science Research Center at the Graduate Center of CUNY."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_dbf716b6fa75415d9d3f2617eef0e2b2.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us a little bit about where you are from."},{"type":"p","html":"I grew up in New York’s lower East Side raised by two artists parents. The neighborhood was in the midst of a big transition from being mostly abandoned squats to flourishing with community gardens and cooperatively owned housing and community organizations, just before it became more popularized during the next wave of gentrification. I also went to New York’s LaGuardia High School where I studied Theater. At the same time, I started an after-school research program at The Museum of Natural History where I worked with grad students from Columbia quantifying masses of supermassive black holes."},{"type":"p","html":"Where did you complete your undergraduate degree? Did you always want to become a scientist?"},{"type":"p","html":"I studied electrical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The school is in upstate New York, in Troy, just outside of Albany. I loved It there. It was a pretty traditional engineering school and I was a mediocre student coming from an arts background, but I had an amazing group of friends who were all kinds of alternative indie kids. I also started playing a lot of ultimate frisbee, which became a big part of my life, which was new for me, always being more of a dancer rather than an athlete. School was always a challenge for me, but my friends and my general curiosity about nature and physics and mathematics always pulled me through. As a kid, I was always curious about the world and trying to build things."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_cb421a52c57f47feaae6ee526d9e5f02.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"After completing your undergraduate degree, you moved to Colorado. Tell us a bit about that experience."},{"type":"p","html":"I actually moved to Colorado after working in New Mexico at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. That was one of the best experiences of my life. Not only did I fall in love with the southwest but working at the observatory I got a lot of great experience working with the technicians on site. Given my new love of the southwest, I decided to do grad school at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I had become fascinated with semiconductor physics after taking a microelectronics class, so I decided to study nanostructures and devices."},{"type":"p","html":"You've worked at Colorado Nanofabrication Lab as an Ethics Research Intern. Could you tell us about this experience, how did you learn about it and what did you enjoy about it?"},{"type":"p","html":"$249"},{"type":"p","html":"It was still a great experience for me, however, because it solidified my interest in this work and introduced me to a whole field of study known as Science, Technology and Society."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_f8dd50ebcfb24628b7f7974a49cee515.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"After completing your MS In Electrical Engineering at the University of Colorado you joined PIXELTEQ. What was your role there and how was your experience?"},{"type":"p","html":"I came on first as the Lead Photolithography Engineer and eventually was promoted to Photolithography Project and Lab Manager. It was a great experience for me to grow my technical and leadership skills. In academia, I was always made to feel inadequate. However, once given a decent level of respect and authority, it turned out I was actually really good at process development and lab management! It was a good opportunity for me to grow my self-esteem as an engineer and as a team leader."},{"type":"p","html":"You founded for 4LoveandScience. Can you tell us about it? What was your inspiration to develop the platform and how did you come up with It?"},{"type":"p","html":"Even while working at Pixelteq I had these existential questions about technology, personal development and social transformation. I knew it was all related, but I just didn't know how to find a career that connected all those things together. Eventually, I started getting into theater and dance again. A friend recruited me to be part of her MFA thesis performance and the process was like an awakening or coming home. I knew after that I had to figure out a way to bring scientific and artistic processes together."},{"type":"p","html":"Since then, 4LoveandScience has grown to be a platform for using science as a transformative tool to explore our internal and external worlds simultaneously. This has looked like talks, workshops and community-based research projects in schools and universities around the country."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_977504a8c58c44d5b33773aaf85acc77.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"In partnership with Nanotech NYC your team and you recently conducted a workshop titled ‘MindfulTech: How to find fulfillment and build tech for a better world’. Can you tell our readers what mindful tech is?"},{"type":"p","html":"Mindful tech means cultivating a deeper sense of awareness of ourselves and our community in the process of building and developing technology. Science and doesn't exist in a vacuum. There is a lot happening in the world that is troubling both in our personal lives and on a larger global scale. These problems aren't going to solve themselves. More likely that they will get worse if we don't all take some responsibility to shift the destructive patterns, we all participate in. The first step is mindfulness and awareness to start to create a better world."},{"type":"p","html":"How did you figure out you wanted to specialize in this area?"},{"type":"p","html":"I have always wanted to learn how to be a better person and a better steward for the earth and my community. This really is just a way of sharing my own personal experiments and curiosities of how to do this."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_3a2c1bbf91a64c02b7ccae3f915106a9.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What are you currently up to?"},{"type":"p","html":"Currently, at the ASRC I work as the Science Education Coordinator running Youth and Community engagement programming. After the Pandemic hit, we had to move all our programming online yet we're excited to be rolling out some fun and creative virtual programming for the upcoming semester. In addition, we are in the second year of our Community Sensor Lab where we are building DIY sensors with high school and community college students which can be used for environmental advocacy in local communities. (Watch Kendra discuss the Community Sensor Lab here)."},{"type":"p","html":"Which scientific problems fascinate you the most?"},{"type":"p","html":"I'm still fascinated with science and the patterns of the universe. My hobby is studying entropy, information theory and complex numbers. I'm really curious about the philosophical analogs of these concepts."},{"type":"p","html":"Where do you hope to take your career in the next 5 or 10 years?"},{"type":"p","html":"I hope to continue to increase my joy, fortitude and curiosity and help others to do so too. Hopefully, it will happen naturally like with entropy. It seems kind of nonsensical to have more concrete 'career' goals at this point in time."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_4844bab6b9b048a6b275ce4f55e9090b.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What do you do for fun outside of your job?"},{"type":"p","html":"I play music, sing in a gospel choir, run, hike and camp."},{"type":"p","html":"Can you get a piece of advice to all the scientists out here?"},{"type":"p","html":"Take time to breathe, find joy and follow your curiosity."},{"type":"p","html":"If you could give your past self advice, what would It be?"},{"type":"p","html":"Life will continue to get more complex so try to just have as much fun as possible and continue to love big."},{"type":"p","html":"Website: http://www.4loveandscience.com/"},{"type":"p","html":"LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kendra-krueger-58a9029/ "},{"type":"p","html":"Twitter: https://twitter.com/ThoughtRevolver"},{"type":"li","html":"Research Highlight"}]},{"slug":"meet-andrew-levine-chemistry-phd-student","oldPath":"/post/meet-andrew-levine-chemistry-phd-student","title":"Meet Andrew Levine: Chemistry PhD Student","date":"2020-09-28","author":null,"category":"Community Spotlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_f7727bfc6cb747008bf99a714f0052ae.jpg","width":1344,"height":756},"excerpt":"Nanotech NYC and the Nanotech Alliance sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Andrew…","readingMinutes":4,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC and the Nanotech Alliance sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Andrew Levine, a 5th year Ph.D. student in the Chemistry Department at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY)."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_f7727bfc6cb747008bf99a714f0052ae.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us a little bit about where you are from (hometown, what it’s like there)."},{"type":"p","html":"I'm from a small hamlet in upstate NY in the Catskills called Cottekill. It's peaceful and rural with lots of farmland, forest, and access to awesome trails in the Catskill Mountains. People love coming up from NYC for the natural beauty, skiing, or my personal favorite, the Garlic Festival."},{"type":"p","html":"Where did you complete your undergraduate and any graduate degrees prior to this one?"},{"type":"p","html":"I did my BS In Chemistry at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, NY. There I was on the Olympic Taekwondo Team, traveling to colleges in the North East to compete in forms and sparring. I received a Masters in Science Teaching (MST) in Chemistry at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, MA, where I carried out research on Silicon Nanowire Photovoltaics."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_3d30f755a503476f83dda65008809045.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"After completing your undergraduate degree, you taught high school science here in New York City. Tell us a bit about that experience."},{"type":"p","html":"It's difficult, to sum up, but in a few words, it was easily the most rewarding and challenging thing I've ever done. I worked at two NYC DOE public schools- two years at the Academy for Innovative Technology and three years at the Academy for Software Engineering, where I developed and taught different science courses including Regents Chem, AP Chem, Regents Physics, Astronomy, and a class I created called The Physics of Superheroes. I also facilitated Science Olympiads, Martial Arts Club, and Board Game Club after school."},{"type":"p","html":"I loved working in NYC public schools because you get to work with such a variety of students and you never know what challenges the day will bring. It's always high energy and a little chaotic working with 30+ teenagers, which honestly made It really fun. The best and most rewarding part Is watching your students walk on stage to receive their diploma knowing full well they're prepared for what's next and that you helped shape them for success. I still keep in touch with my students and they continue to make me proud."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_c3230176aec149bfbdcc7648f962746a.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"How did you figure out you wanted to become a high school teacher prior to your current Ph.D. Program?"},{"type":"p","html":"I knew I loved teaching science as a TA for gen chem at RPI and BC, but I was unsure about teaching high school until I started a practicum through my master’s program at BC. My host teacher was passionate about both teaching science and social justice. She really showed me that being a teacher means so much more than showing students how to solve problems. It's also about recognizing the inequity that persists in our schools as a result of race and class and how to reach more students despite socioeconomic disparity and to teach them how to be more critical of the deluge of daily Information we use to make important decisions that shape our lives and those around us."},{"type":"p","html":"What was your motivation for deciding to pursue a Ph.D. after entering the workforce?"},{"type":"p","html":"I thought I found my calling with teaching, and I'm sure it'll remain a part of my life regardless of my next steps, but candidly, I was missing scientific research and the problem solving that came with It. I felt unfinished, and that I could do more."},{"type":"p","html":"What is your current status as a graduate student?"},{"type":"p","html":"I am a Chemistry Ph.D. candidate, aiming to graduate in the Spring of 2021."},{"type":"p","html":"What group are you in and what is the group’s overall focus?"},{"type":"p","html":"I'm in the Braunschweig Group, and we're traditionally organic chemists solving challenges in a number of areas chemically at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC), but the group has a few main thrusts including organic solar energy harvesting (that's me), anti-zika carbohydrate receptors, synthetic mucins, and photochemical nanolithography."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_6569381622a64479bbf9c9e3e3402b88.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What is your particular research on?"},{"type":"p","html":"My research focuses on the structure-property relationships in organic semiconductors as a means for improving solar energy harvesting compared to bulk materials. More specifically, I synthesize molecules that assemble supramolecularly (noncovalently) into highly ordered nanostructures, use cleanroom fabrication techniques to cast them into films, and study their emergent photophysics, like charge transfer and a relatively new process called singlet fission. We hypothesize that films composed of highly ordered nanostructures will Improve energy harvesting by organizing the organic semiconductor interface at the molecular level."},{"type":"p","html":"Can you tell me about some potential future applications for your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"Organic semiconductors can potentially be used for making organic solar cells and sensors. Organic solar cells are not currently as efficient as their silicon counterparts on the market, but with more development, might be cheaper to manufacture. The Solar Industry Is driven by price/watt, so It's a trade-off."},{"type":"p","html":"Where do you hope to take your career after the Ph.D. program?"},{"type":"p","html":"I hope to work In Industry full-time and that my future job allows for some element of teaching. I'm currently networking and learning what \"Industry\" really means. Can't wait to dive in!"},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_a59608e77a904bd8a50fcb7a59b59e79.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What do you do for fun outside of your program?"},{"type":"p","html":"Soccer, cooking, rock-climbing, gardening, and astrophotography. I also recently self-published a cookbook during quarantine! Andy’s Cookbook, available on Amazon. It was nothing fancy, but it was very fun. I matched and donated all royalties to City Harvest, which is a food rescue organization in NYC."},{"type":"p","html":"If you could go back to the first day you started your graduate work and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?"},{"type":"p","html":"You got this."},{"type":"p","html":"LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-levine-3b3b3311/"},{"type":"p","html":"Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrewmlevine/"},{"type":"p","html":"Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyscookbook"}]},{"slug":"meet-giuseppe-maria-de-peppo-senior-principal-investigator","oldPath":"/post/meet-giuseppe-maria-de-peppo-senior-principal-investigator","title":"Meet Giuseppe Maria de Peppo: Senior Principal Investigator ","date":"2020-04-20","author":"Francesco Lavini","category":"Community Spotlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_fb39fb0fb8924af98e8997ca4f60b6b8.jpg","width":1344,"height":756},"excerpt":"Updated: Apr 28, 2020","readingMinutes":10,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Updated: Apr 28, 2020"},{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC sits down with researchers, faculty, and students from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotech scene. Today we sit down with Giuseppe Maria de Peppo, NYSCF – Ralph Lauren Senior Principal Investigator at the New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Research Institute, where he leads the Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering Lab. His research focuses mainly on tissue engineering and cell replacement therapies. Kudos to our ambassador Alessandra Zanut for her help in drawing up the questions."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_fb39fb0fb8924af98e8997ca4f60b6b8.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"1) Tell us a little bit about where you are from."},{"type":"p","html":"I was born in Lucera, a small town in the Province of Foggia in the region of Puglia, which is located in the southern peninsular section of Italy. Puglia is sometimes called the “heel” of Italy, considering the country has got the shape of a “boot”. Life in Puglia is very simple: the weather is mild, food is delicious, and there are miles and miles of beautiful coastline. I guess the combination of these things makes people quite happy and cheerful. I had an awesome time living there when I was a kid."},{"type":"p","html":"2) What about your professional journey so far?"},{"type":"p","html":"$24a"},{"type":"p","html":"That was an incredible experience, which allowed me to explore the international research scene and meet many talented students coming from all over Europe. Certainly, this experience gave a significant boost to my career, which led my first to Sweden for my Ph.D. and eventually to NYC."},{"type":"p","html":"3) You earned your Ph.D. degree in the framework of the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Program. What was the focus of your doctoral research and what opportunities did this program allow you to experience?"},{"type":"p","html":"$24b"},{"type":"p","html":"One of the key strengths of the Curie’s fellowship program is the opportunity for students to complete research turnovers around European laboratories. Leveraging this option, after about 2 years I moved to Paris, France where I learned how to use bioreactors to support the growth of clinical size bone grafts for replacement therapies. But not everything during my Ph.D. was about tissue engineering. In collaboration with researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, I explored the nanotechnology field while using colloidal lithography to pattern the surface of metallic implants for enhancing their therapeutic potential. I must say that the international breadth of experiences provided by the Curie fellowship helped me to build a solid and competitive work ethic, which I think is very important to succeed in research today."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_97d97d43905c4b34a11187c3ea6c53d1.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"4) What drove you to start working on tissue engineering?"},{"type":"p","html":"During high school, besides the idea of becoming a biotechnologist, I was intrigued by other fields, including engineering, design, astrophysics, robotics, etc. Tissue engineering is a multidisciplinary field, which requires combining principles of biology, material science, engineering, automation, and so forth. I am a very curious person and working in tissue engineering gives me the opportunity to learn always new things. I feel I can do something different every day I go to the lab. This keeps fueling my enthusiasm. Tissue engineering holds the potential to revolutionize medicine by growing replacement tissues and organs on-demand, and thus to improve the health status and quality of life of millions of people worldwide. The idea that I can shape a meaningful and tangible impact with my research makes a huge difference. I have an extra drive to go to the lab every morning!"},{"type":"p","html":"5) What brought you to work at NYSCF? What is your role now at NYSCF and what are some of the specific projects you are working on at the moment?"},{"type":"p","html":"$24c"},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_b442f7a8a22f4e3e838b4c267f3b3b2d.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"6) What is the major, broader goal of your research?"},{"type":"p","html":"In simple words, I do orthopedic research with the help of stem cells. Stem cells are the building blocks of our body and thus are very powerful for both research and therapy. For example, one can use stem cells to create models of development and disease, to test drugs and implant materials, and to engineer tissues for replacement therapies. We try to do a bit of all these things in my lab. It is so much fun and there is always so much to learn. We also work a lot with orthopedic implants and biomaterials, to improve their properties for clinical applications. For example, we use stem cells to functionalize the surface of orthopedic devices with coatings of high biological relevance that could enhance their reception into the human body. Other projects are focused on developing strategies and tools that can facilitate the transition of stem cell-based and tissue-engineered products from bench to bedside."},{"type":"p","html":"7) Your research includes manufacturing and testing biomaterial scaffolds, design and validation of bioreactors, intelligent monitoring of the culture environment, prosthetics and implantology research, etc. What is your opinion on multidisciplinary research?"},{"type":"p","html":"Personally, I did not experience any cons in doing multidisciplinary research. Actually, I do not think there are any. Science is becoming increasingly multidisciplinary. There is not just one solution to problems. Problems can be approached from many different perspectives. Only by looking at problems holistically, one can find better solutions, faster. Having a multidisciplinary education gives one the confidence to take on complex problems and find smarter solutions, which eventually could lead to breakthrough innovations with high social impact and commercial potential. A multidisciplinary approach allows one to redefine problems beyond normal boundaries and reach solutions based on a more profound understanding of complex situations. It is well established that a multidisciplinary approach can effectively promote creativity. Stay curious, stay creative."},{"type":"p","html":"8) What do you think the future holds for bone tissue engineering?"},{"type":"p","html":"Someday, the use of bone transplants and alloplastic materials for bone reconstructions might become an obsolete practice. We will instead be able to grow patient-specific bone on-demand, and thus circumvent the complications associated with current treatments. This could save the lives of millions of patients, especially kids suffering from devastating bone cancers whose bones are still growing and cannot be treated with alloplastic materials. Besides their potential in reconstructive therapies, tissue-engineered bone grafts will be increasingly used as qualified models to study development and disease as well as test drugs and biomaterials within a context that better reflects the native bone environment."},{"type":"p","html":"9) What do you do for fun outside of the lab? How is your work-life balance?"},{"type":"p","html":"I read, cook, watch documentaries, bike, swim, play music, dance, and travel. I have to say that traveling is my favorite leisure. It gives me the possibility to learn facts about the world one cannot learn at school or in books. It really boosts my creativity. I also love adventure and visiting amazing places around the world keeps me happy. All these activities are very well balanced with my work. Actually, they are essential to elaborate on all the observations I make when doing experiments in the lab. I always get my best ideas when having fun. I am also interested in all kinds of art, so I visit museums very often."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_743d594f4b0d40dc9631e08e28201699.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"10) What suggestions would you give to early-career scientists in the biotechnology field?"},{"type":"p","html":"This is a very important question. There are so many things that a young scientist should keep in mind. The biotech field is very competitive so one must be always informed about new scientific discoveries and developments. Also, one must interact with as broad a research community as possible in order to build a network of peers with similar interests. One must stay enthusiastic and have a strong curiosity in order to build an authentic passion for science and technology. This means also being able to use the time wisely. I would also suggest to always keep an open mind and believe in your ideas, especially the more unconventional ones, but always weigh the risk and benefits of doing risky science. Be persistent and ready to cope with failure and rejections. Be optimistic. Most importantly, do science with integrity and honesty. Do it with joy!"},{"type":"p","html":"11) And what about yourself? If you could go back in time, what advice will you give to your younger self?"},{"type":"p","html":"Well, if I could go back in time, I would tell myself to do all the things that I actually did. I have been always very determined and passionate about science and technology, and I have had always clear ideas about what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to become a scientist and an inventor. Perhaps I would warn my young self to stay strong because, you know, in science you have to deal with failure over and over again. Oh well, maybe that is the real fun of it!"},{"type":"p","html":"LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuseppemariadepeppo/"}]},{"slug":"meet-jonathan-stoeber-chemistry-phd-student","oldPath":"/post/meet-jonathan-stoeber-chemistry-phd-student","title":"Meet Jonathan Stoeber: Chemistry PhD Student","date":"2020-03-02","author":null,"category":"Community Spotlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_931702d3c60d46769415f0f80f253212.jpg","width":1344,"height":756},"excerpt":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Jonathan Stoeber, a 3rd year PhD…","readingMinutes":4,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Jonathan Stoeber, a 3rd year PhD student in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University–New Brunswick."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_23718cabafb24550818f0b2af0ee79ff.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us a little bit about where you are from (hometown, what it’s like there)."},{"type":"p","html":"I grew up in a small, inner-city community, Reading, Pennsylvania, about an hour outside of Philadelphia. Reading is your standard working-class city, riddled with drugs and poverty and an economy dependent upon manufacturing jobs. Growing up in this environment was definitely interesting and by no means easy. However, I love the city where I’m from and extremely thankful for all the experiences that have helped me during the course of my research career."},{"type":"p","html":"Where did you complete your undergraduate and any graduate degrees prior to this one?"},{"type":"p","html":"I completed my undergraduate degree at Ursinus College, majoring in chemistry. Ursinus is a very small school, roughly 1,600 students, tucked into Collegeville, PA just outside of Philadelphia. It was here where I began my research career, working with Dr. Mark Ellison on various carbon nanotube projects. Dr. Ellison’s curiosity and passion for nanoscience resonated with me, and after many conversations with him, I decided that pursuing a graduate degree was the right move for me."},{"type":"p","html":"What is your current status as a graduate student?"},{"type":"p","html":"I’m currently a 3rd year graduate student in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University - New Brunswick. I’m planning to graduate at the end of 2022 or the beginning of 2023, which will be a couple months into my 6th year."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_fc9e6a965c9a42e88e609d25a2bc3a5e.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What group are you in and what is the group’s overall focus?"},{"type":"p","html":"I’m in Dr. Jean Baum’s group, where we study protein aggregation, alpha-synuclein, using solution NMR and other biophysical techniques."},{"type":"p","html":"What is your particular research on?"},{"type":"p","html":"I am particularly interested in the mechanisms of aggregation and the properties of the resulting fibrils that are formed. For example, I am starting a project aimed at studying the interactions between gold nanoclusters and alpha-synuclein. I’ll be utilizing solution NMR, UV-Vis, and Thioflavin T fluorescence assays to determine the interactions between the nanoclusters and alpha-synuclein and their resulting effects on the aggregation pathway. I also utilize atomic force microscopy and solid-state NMR to characterize the fibrils that are formed."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_b776a1b91ecf4f2ca9ce761e9fb4e3c9.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Can you tell me about some potential future applications for your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"The ultimate goal would be to develop a nanotechnology that can treat Parkinson’s Disease by inhibiting the formation of toxic aggregates. If that doesn’t come to fruition, I am hoping that I can shed some light on the interactions that cause inhibition, which will be crucial information when developing future therapeutics for Parkinson’s."},{"type":"p","html":"How did you figure out you wanted to specialize in this area?"},{"type":"p","html":"I came to Rutgers knowing that I wanted to work on a project involving nanoparticles, but did not have a specific project in mind."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_b643a4736803449895f328dcd93d00a1.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"You seem to be interested in the intersection between science and policy. Tell us where that interest comes from and what activities you participate in."},{"type":"p","html":"I attended a workshop in DC called Catalyzing Advocacy in Science and Engineering. This was a 2-day workshop of various lectures on how a scientist can use their position to have an impact on policy, followed by a trip to the hill to lobby congress to support federally funded research. This trip was amazing and gave me the inspiration to pursue this work. Currently, I’m on the executive board of the Rutgers science policy graduate organization, Science Policy and Advocacy at Rutgers. We plan and host various workshops, lectures, and events aimed at increasing graduate students’ knowledge and participation with science policy, science advocacy, and science communication."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_44d58675136b4384a15b6834ee71d0ff.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Where do you hope to take your career in the next 5 or 10 years?"},{"type":"p","html":"I’m still deciding whether I want to continue my career in science or transition into science policy. If I decide to continue in science, I plan to do a postdoc, hopefully in Europe. I am very interested in the business side of science and would love to go to work for a startup on the business side of things. If I decide to stay in science policy, I will be looking to secure a job in DC after I graduate. My ultimate goal would be to work in the NIH, shaping the future of research."},{"type":"p","html":"What do you do for fun outside of your program?"},{"type":"p","html":"Outside of the lab I try and be as active as possible. I play a lot of basketball and try and get some yoga and weightlifting in as well. Other than that, I hang out with my friends and watch a ton of sports."},{"type":"p","html":"If you could go back to the first day you started your graduate work and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?"},{"type":"p","html":"Take a deep breath, I know you don’t have a clue what you’re doing right now but I promise you that you’re going to figure it out."},{"type":"p","html":"LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-stoeber/"}]},{"slug":"meet-omar-gowayed-chemical-and-biomolecular-engineering-phd-student","oldPath":"/post/meet-omar-gowayed-chemical-and-biomolecular-engineering-phd-student","title":"Meet Omar Gowayed: Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering PhD Student","date":"2020-01-07","author":"Francesco Lavini","category":"Research Highlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_045cc7fff03343588792e81b76bbd9c3.png","width":1344,"height":756},"excerpt":"Updated: Feb 29, 2020","readingMinutes":12,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Updated: Feb 29, 2020"},{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Omar Gowayed, a 4th year PhD student in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at NYU Tandon School of Engineering."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_045cc7fff03343588792e81b76bbd9c3.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us a little bit about where you are from."},{"type":"p","html":"I’m a Southerner born and raised. My family came from Egypt, but I was born in North Carolina and raised in Alabama."},{"type":"p","html":"Where did you complete your undergraduate and any graduate degrees prior to this one?"},{"type":"p","html":"I left Auburn, Alabama for Ohio to go to Ohio State University where I studied Materials Science and Engineering with a minor in Computer Information Systems. I did not pursue a masters, but instead I worked in Materials Data Management in Indiana before starting my PhD."},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us more about your graduate studies. What group are you in and what is your particular research on?"},{"type":"p","html":"I am currently a fourth year Ph.D. candidate in Materials Chemistry working on Non-Photochemical Laser Induced Nucleation (NPLIN) and laser tweezers with Prof. Bruce Garetz."},{"type":"p","html":"To clarify what NPLIN is, imagine this: in order to make rock candy, you mix two parts water and one part sugar and boil it for a few minutes. Afterwards, you let it cool down and the mix becomes a supersaturated solution of sugar water. From this point, one way to make the candy is to put a stick in the solution and over days you can literally watch crystals form and grow on the stick. Another way (which let’s be honest sounds much more cool) is to shoot it with a high powered laser. This would make crystals within the laser beam path in nanoseconds, and this is what is called NPLIN."},{"type":"p","html":"Optical tweezing consists in tightly focusing a laser beam in order to spatially control materials within the focal point of the beam. I use it on a thin film of a supersaturated solution of glycine and heavy water in order to make a new liquid phase in the solution. The new liquid phase has interesting properties: it is stable for minutes after formation even after turning off the focusing beam and can move with the focusing beam."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_56002b373319459e99af6bf7d6a7c37b.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"My recently published paper combines these two techniques and studies the effect of NPLIN on the droplet formed with optical tweezing. Our data indicates that this Laser Induced Phase Separated (LIPS) droplet actually consists of a concentration gradient of aqueous molecular clusters, molecules that came together to reduce their free energy and sizes, with the largest clusters closer to the center of the droplet, and that NPLIN could nucleate crystals within the droplet phase."},{"type":"p","html":"Can you tell me about some potential future applications for your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"High speed polymorphically and spatially selective nucleation can help make pure and specialized crystals with high throughput that can be used in numerous applications: from medicine, to cosmetics, dyes, and even photovoltaics. Currently, crystallization takes a long time, there is limited control over the size, shape and purity of nucleated crystals. However, NPLIN has the potential to dramatically reverse and overcome these limits."},{"type":"p","html":"You are definitely a person who cannot sit on his hands. Which other projects outside the lab do you keep yourself busy with? (Anything you want, really. You can mention March for Science of course, but I’d like to focus on Urban Food Lab, both because we featured MFS in Ingrid’s interview already, and because I think it is a really nice and appealing project to talk about here!)"},{"type":"p","html":"I have two main projects that I work on: I’m the founder and head instructor of the NYU Urban Food Lab and the co-chair of March for Science NYC."},{"type":"p","html":"Urban Food Lab started with an aquaponic (which translates into using fish waste as nutrients) vertical farm that my colleagues and I built few years ago. After building the farm, my colleagues took the knowledge acquired in working in our vertical farm to start their own company called WE ARE THE NEW FARMERS, where they grow an edible algae named spirulina, while I kept working on the farm and integrated the project into a class in New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_b47547cb2dc1495088e7b625b43e13e2.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"One of the main things that I didn’t explicitly learn as an undergrad is how to design an experiment. I had to learn the hard way by making terrible over the top designs. I wanted to give undergrads a leg up, so I turned the farm into an actual class where students can learn research design and proposal writing in a unique setting, while working on a farm platform. Students in my class work weekly on maintaining and growing the farm,s all while running their own experiments. Some of the experiments include:"},{"type":"p","html":"1) Vermi-Composting of Styrofoam: a Computer Science student uses mealworms to compost polystyrene foam (Styrofoam) and farm waste by adapting new findings in the vermi-composting field.‎ This project has moved onto a second phase, in which the student is evaluating the toxicity of the compost in the farming of kale."},{"type":"p","html":"2) Farm-to-pharmacy cosmetics using fresh calendula: a Chemical Engineering student has made a face cream using calendula, a flower grown in the farm. The project team is currently collaborating with Dr. Grier, a Physics professor at NYU, to use holographic imaging to explore how active ingredients from the fresh calendula binds to the lipids in the solution’s oil."},{"type":"p","html":"3) Ferris wheel farm: a Mechanical Engineering student is building a small prototype for a vertical farm to become more ergonomic, so that one does not have to climb a ladder to take care of the plants."},{"type":"p","html":"4) Air quality analysis: a Sustainable Urban Environments student is exploring air quality (CO2 and organic particulates) in and around the farm in order to determine the effects of building a farm space in an active working environment."},{"type":"p","html":"Inclusiveness and ease of approach are fundamentals of the project, and are reflected by the variety of backgrounds of my students. There are 14 experiments currently ongoing in the class and they are all awesome!"},{"type":"p","html":"Students also have the opportunity to get extra credit by engaging in activism around sustainability. They have volunteered at voter registration drives, attending the Social Good Summit as a part of the UN’s Youth Climate Week, marshaled March for Science events, and more!"},{"type":"p","html":"Speaking of March for Science, along with another NYU Tandon student, Ingrid Paredes, I am the co-chair of March for Science NYC. This organization focuses on mobilizing scientists to advocate for the use of science for the common good! You can find more info about our organization on the interview the Nanotech NYC team made with Ingrid. Here, I am really excited to announce that we will be marching April 19th from Foley Square in 2020!"},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_ef5c387c03e441cb89b45118989abf1f.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"You are very enthusiastic about all these initiatives, and mostly about the Urban Food Lab. Why is it important to foster such project, both from a scientific point of view and in the framework of your School’s academic offer?"},{"type":"p","html":"It is really important for me, on a personal level, to learn how to teach. As someone who is exploring himself academically, I think it is fundamental to go beyond the research and into learning how to properly and creatively teach. As a PhD candidate there is very minimal focus on giving us true experience with teaching and I feel the need to correct that for myself."},{"type":"p","html":"As mentioned previously, I see it as important for undergraduate students to learn about experimental design and proposal writing, but it is also important for them to learn about sustainability and to advocate for themselves. The farm itself offers a perfect opportunity for that. Every proposal developed within and for the farm has to explain how their personal project will advance sustainability. They have to look at the materials lifecycle when they are putting in requests to order new supplies. This really puts into practice how to think about an engineering project. Something that we definitely need more of."},{"type":"p","html":"As an advice for other students, how do you manage to balance the time and energy spent on extracurricular activities with your PhD work? Was it ever source of friction between you and your Advisor?"},{"type":"p","html":"I try to go to work focused every day. I sleep in, take my time waking up, eat a filling breakfast, drink coffee, and watch a show. When I feel right, I go in. This allows me to be always focused when I am on campus. I don’t sit back and zone out. I just jump from one task to the next. If my laser is heating up, I will go work on something for March for Science or the farm. If I am writing a manuscript and I lose focus, I find another task. If I feel overly stressed, I’ll go exercise or for a walk. Being calm and having these extra projects actually keeps me constantly focused on my research. It has also trained me to use new equipment and think more creatively in solving my research problems. If I need a new aperture for a high powered laser beam, I know how to make a temporary one downstairs in the Makerspace where I work on the farm."},{"type":"p","html":"My advisor has been a great supporter of this. I think I am wired to work slower if I only have one task. I lose focus and start to daydream or get lost on social media. However, when I have more than one thing to do, I can always have fresh eyes, a new perspective, when I am looking at a problem."},{"type":"p","html":"Your family origins trace back to Egypt, and you have always proven yourself proud and connected to your culture. How does this aspect motivate your professional choices?"},{"type":"p","html":"My grandfather was the first in my family to leave the Gowayed Village, a village close to Shubra Kheit located in the Nile Delta, and pursue an education in dermatology. He became the first Dr. Gowayed. He’s also the first to pursue urban farming in our family. In our apartment complex in Egypt, he had planted a mango tree, guava trees, and papaya trees. He also kept bees, chickens, and roosters."},{"type":"p","html":"Since my grandfather made that decision, education in pursuit of one’s dreams has been a strong driver in my family. My father came to the USA for a Ph.D., my mother has her masters, my sister and I also pursued PhDs. I believe that, in a way, I followed in my grandfather’s footsteps by building an urban farm in a big city while seeking an education."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_b42f32bb187145669555686165955f83.png","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"$24d"},{"type":"p","html":"You can all visit its gorgeous crystal clear, turquoise beaches on the Mediterranean in between Alexandria and Mersa Matruh. When there, you should ask the locals for their version of the story. Trust me, it varies. While thinking about the answer to this question, I wanted to see if I could find an online source for the story, and I found one written in a book (No One Sleeps in Alexandria by Ibrahim Abdel Meguid). It’s definitely going to be my dad’s next birthday present."},{"type":"p","html":"Science seems a strong cornerstone in your life. What brought you into the STEM field and why do you think science should be at the very center of public dialogue?"},{"type":"p","html":"My father was a professor at Auburn University in Polymer and Fiber Engineering. As a child, I would visit his lab often. I loved it! This early exposure to STEM definitely made it a cornerstone in my life."},{"type":"p","html":"It’s not necessarily STEM that I believe should be at the center of public dialogue, but evidence. STEM and other fields study humanity, reality, human expression, and how we can make our lives better. I think that it is absurd to have this wealth of knowledge and information on how to make our lives better, then make our policies about arbitrary unsupported beliefs or even worse, disproven nonsense."},{"type":"p","html":"How did you figure out you wanted to start a PhD program and specialize in your research area?"},{"type":"p","html":"I fell in love with Materials science when I was an undergrad in Mechanical Engineering. I took the intro class and then switched majors the next semester. It was fun, it made sense, and I loved it, but it caused me to graduate a semester late. As an undergrad, I did research and had an internship working on metals. They were both fun and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get a PhD or go to industry, so I applied for both. I got a job first as a consultant with a company called Materials Data Management Inc. in Indianapolis, Indiana. I later got accepted to PhD programs and deferred enrolment until I was sure that I wanted to pursue this path. Eventually, I missed research too much. I liked playing with toys and learning all day, so I accepted the position."},{"type":"p","html":"Where do you hope to take your career after you complete your PhD?"},{"type":"p","html":"As long as I get to research and teach, I am happy. My dream is to be a professor, have my own lab, and create new classes for students to learn in unique ways."},{"type":"p","html":"What do you do outside of the lab for fun?"},{"type":"p","html":"Day to day, I enjoy unwinding by going to the gym or taking a fun workout class. My partner definitely keeps me focused on my humanity. She knows the best desert spots and always has an awesome new adventure idea. I wouldn’t be able to do any this without her."},{"type":"p","html":"If you could go back to the first day you started your graduate work and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?"},{"type":"p","html":"It’s usually better to do no work at all, than to do the terrible work we do when stressed. When stressed, go watch a silly show, read a book, go on a walk, or sit in some random park, but stop working."},{"type":"p","html":"LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omar-gowayed/"},{"type":"li","html":"Research Highlight"}]},{"slug":"meet-dr-fernando-camino-staff-scientist-cfn-brookhaven-national-lab","oldPath":"/post/meet-dr-fernando-camino-staff-scientist-cfn-brookhaven-national-lab","title":"Meet Dr. Fernando Camino: Staff Scientist, CFN, Brookhaven National Lab ","date":"2019-12-03","author":"Shruti Sharma","category":"Research Highlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_7c78c8062f17430f9e3483d86ee1b4d2.jpg","width":1344,"height":756},"excerpt":"Updated: Mar 4, 2021","readingMinutes":5,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Updated: Mar 4, 2021"},{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the greater NYC area to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Dr. Fernando Camino, a Staff Scientist at Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), Brookhaven National Lab."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_7c78c8062f17430f9e3483d86ee1b4d2.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us a little bit about where you are from."},{"type":"p","html":"I am from Lima, Peru. I spent a lot of time near the ocean, which I like so much. I think that is why I feel very comfortable living in Long Island. However, this was not planned at all!"},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us about your professional journey so far."},{"type":"p","html":"I received my B.S and Licentiate degrees in physics from the National Engineering University in Lima, Peru, and my Ph.D. degree in physics from Stony Brook University. My Ph.D. work centered in electronic transport in semiconductor heterostructures. I also worked at Stony Brook University as a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Research Scientist fabricating and studying quantum interferometers that work in the integer and fractional quantum Hall regimes. In 2007, I joined the scientific staff of the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) where I work until now."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_1c0a91262f2846b9a086fafd811a1c43.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What facilities are you leading now and what is the group’s overall focus? Can you tell us about some potential applications for your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"I oversee several instruments in several facilities at the CFN. In the Electrical Characterization Facility, I use instruments that allow electronic transport studies at variable temperature (from 4K to 800 K) and magnetic fields (up to 3 Tesla). In the Nanofabrication Facility, I supervise the operation of a dual-beam (electron and ion) microscope, which we like to refer as our nanoscale Swiss Army knife, since it possesses multiple nanofabrication capabilities, such as nanoscale milling of practically any material, patterning of structures via beam-assisted deposition and sample micromanipulation. I also supervise the use of a low-energy transmission electron microscope (TEM) and a low-temperature TEM holder, which is one of a handful of holders in the world that can achieve temperatures as low as 12 K."},{"type":"p","html":"What Is the next big project you are planning to undertake?"},{"type":"p","html":"I love the challenge of making novel devices, which usually requires the development of non-conventional nanofabrication techniques. Recently, CFN scientist achieved one nanometer scale electron-beam lithography, which we used to modify the geometry of Si nanopillars to tune their plasmonic response. I find this capability fascinating! I would like to use it to modify the geometry of atomically thin 2D materials (graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides, etc.), which already have special properties thanks to their intrinsic reduced dimensions."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_ef767f48ba8a4018a73cb5dc3a8a7f75.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Do you collaborate with groups in Greater NYC area? How is it complimentary and important to your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"I do collaborate, and it is a big component of my work. The CFN is a user facility with a dual mission of performing world-class in-house science and offering our user community access to state-of-art instrumentation and staff expertise. For example, Prof. Fang Li from New York Institute of Technology uses our Electrical Characterization Facility to test microwave pressure sensors that work at cryogenic temperatures."},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us about your role in the outreach programs for CFN (High school programs, summer Sundays, others). What was some rewarding/difficult experiences?"},{"type":"p","html":"I have organized and participated in several outreach activities during my time in the CFN. I am always thrilled by the enthusiasm for science that boys and particularly girls show during these events. I especially like to interact with middle school kids, since they are at an age in which their enthusiasm is complemented with deeper understanding, making them even more interested in science. A good challenge for everyone is to maintain the kids’ interest in science through their high-school years (what a challenge!) so they can use it to succeed in college and graduate school. BNL supports and encourages outreach projects with local schools. The best way to learn about the many of outreach activities at BNL is to contact a staff at the Office of Educational Programs (https://www.bnl.gov/education/staff.php)."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_977ccee5bac74b228e2a6f1de501709c.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What do you do for fun outside of your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"I have lots of fun sitting at coffee shops with my younger daughter and practicing math problems. We just do it for 20-30 mins, the rest of the time we separately read, draw or check the web. I need to bribe her with good snacks and drinks, but the reward for me is immense when I see the emotion in her face when she solves a problem by herself. I notice that this gives her a lot of confidence and hopefully will help her in the future. My older daughter also had many snacks at the coffee shop. She is now a physics major in her junior year. I am very proud of both of my daughters."},{"type":"p","html":"If you could go back in time, what advice will you give to your younger self?"},{"type":"p","html":"I took time away from college to work for a few years in order to afford the social lifestyle that my friends, outside the university and with better economic status, could afford. Luckily, I realized that the most important thing for me was to continue my scientific career. I wished I could have realized this at an earlier time."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_4b6da697a77a426faa3ac73144bb8cce.jpg","width":1344,"height":756,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What advice/suggestions would you give to early career scientists in the nanoscience field?"},{"type":"p","html":"I think that finding good mentors/advisors is a vital component of success in any field. I am very grateful to both my Ph.D. and postdoctoral advisors. They are not only outstanding scientists, but also excellent human beings. The same applies to finding your boss in your first “real” job. I was also extremely lucky in this case. Luck is very helpful, but if you are not lucky, it doesn’t mean that you have to stick with a bad advisor or boss. Switching research groups or jobs in search of a better environment is not a bad thing. There are plenty of excellent scientists who are also excellent people. Any time you devote to searching a good place to work is time very well spent."},{"type":"p","html":"LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fernando-camino-5113a313b/"},{"type":"li","html":"Research Highlight"}]},{"slug":"meet-richard-li-mechanical-engineering-phd-student","oldPath":"/post/meet-richard-li-mechanical-engineering-phd-student","title":"Meet Richard Li: Mechanical Engineering PhD Student","date":"2019-09-18","author":null,"category":"Research Highlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_e9b786ead80242bea143348d54c4f5b7.jpg","width":1500,"height":1125},"excerpt":"Updated: Oct 8, 2020","readingMinutes":9,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Updated: Oct 8, 2020"},{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Richard Li, a 5th year PhD student in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Columbia University."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_e9b786ead80242bea143348d54c4f5b7.jpg","width":1500,"height":1125,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us a little bit about where you are from."},{"type":"p","html":"I was born in Syracuse, NY, but my family eventually moved to Holmdel, a small suburban-ish town in central New Jersey. If you want to know what my high school was like, think of a cross between \"Better Luck Tomorrow\" and \"Jersey Shore.\" Holmdel at the time was sort of interesting in that it had large swaths of farmland, but just down the street from these grazing cattle was an enormous Bell Labs research complex where world-leading research was taking place. My parents worked at Bell Labs in its heyday. As a kid, I didn't care much for the actual work that was going on, but I remember there were big Christmas parties, special events like cultural nights, and movie screenings in a big private theater. A cool little piece of trivia is that Holmdel is home to the Horn Antenna, which two Bell Labs employees used to inadvertently discover cosmic microwave background radiation, providing evidence for the Big Bang theory and earning a Nobel Prize in Physics."},{"type":"p","html":"Where did you complete your undergraduate and any graduate degrees prior to this one?"},{"type":"p","html":"I got a bachelor's in civil engineering and a certificate (minor) in architecture from Princeton University. I was an architecture major for a year before I decided I wanted to do something more \"concrete.\" (Pun intended.) Later, I completed my master's in civil engineering and engineering mechanics at Columbia University before deciding to stick around for the PhD program in mechanical engineering."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_7dd4186aa1444780bd8a09e073e1f324.jpg","width":1500,"height":1125,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"After completing your undergraduate degree at Princeton, you entered the United States Navy? Can you tell us what lead you to that decision?"},{"type":"p","html":"Yes, it's one of the best decisions I have ever made. There were a lot of factors. I was a high school junior during 9/11, and from our school we could see the smoke billowing from the towers. By the time I was in college, many of my peers were fighting and dying through the worst of the Iraq War. I had also had the chance to travel overseas and see how extremely fortunate we are to live in this country. I felt compelled to do my part. On the practical side, I also needed money for school, and I saw that the Navy was offering scholarships for high demand specialties like engineers and lawyers. It was serendipitous, and there was no question for me after that."},{"type":"p","html":"Can you tell us about your time in the Navy?"},{"type":"p","html":"I was commissioned as a Civil Engineer Corps (Seabee) officer. During my 6 years of active duty I was based in 3 different duty stations. My first job was as a platoon commander and logistics officer at Naval Mobile Construction Battalion ELEVEN (yes, we like to capitalize our numbers) in Gulfport, Mississippi. We went to Afghanistan in 2009 to build up infrastructure to support President Obama's troop surge. I was responsible for basically all logistics surrounding our unit's activities, from scheduling flights and supply missions to ordering circuit breakers and loading lumber onto helicopters. We stayed on a big base that was relatively safe, except for the poorly aimed rockets that were fired upon us nearly every night."},{"type":"p","html":"My second duty station was at Naval Air Station Meridian, Mississippi as the Facilities Engineering and Acquisition Division Director. I managed a small office which was responsible for all construction and maintenance contracts on the base. We oversaw projects like airfield improvements and the construction of a new child care center and gym."},{"type":"p","html":"My third and final duty station was in Little Creek, VA as an engineer embedded with a SEAL team. Of course, we went to Afghanistan. There, I managed the maintenance, repair, and distribution of nearly all our equipment, including generators, tactical vehicles, weapons systems, counter-IED systems, and communications gear. I had my own team of over 50 sailors, soldiers, and civilians spread across multiple sites in the country. It was a massive effort. I also got to drive through and see a lot of the beautiful Afghanistan countryside. That was very cool."},{"type":"p","html":"After the Navy, you worked as an engineer in New York City. Tell us a bit about that and what lead you to go back to school for your PhD."},{"type":"p","html":"I worked as a structural engineer at Robert Silman Associates, designing foundations and structural framing for schools, apartment buildings, and other structures in the city. My pet project was a cantilevering canopy on East 34th St. The design process involved a combination of CAD, finite element modelling, and old school hand calculations. The work was interesting for a while, but I eventually realized that I was still spending much more time at a desk than I would like. I decided to go back to school for a master's degree and try my hand at lab work, which I envisioned would be more hands-on. It helped immensely that I had the GI Bill and didn't have to worry about tuition and rent. I loved the lab and research work so much that I decided to stay on for a PhD."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_36e125bd7f354b339e13b211b0ca9fa6.jpg","width":1500,"height":1125,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What is your current status as a graduate student?"},{"type":"p","html":"I am beginning my 5th year in the Mechanical Engineering PhD program. I hope to graduate and maybe get a full night of sleep by the end of 2020."},{"type":"p","html":"What group are you in and what is the group’s overall focus?"},{"type":"p","html":"I am in the Small Scale Mechanics Lab led by Professor Jeffrey Kysar. We have a mix of projects. Maybe our group motto should be something like, \"If it's small, we can do it all.\" Currently, the group's biggest project focuses on the mechanics of the round window membrane, which separates the inner ear from the middle ear, and developing mechanisms for drug delivery through this membrane. My predecessors in the group made the measurements that established graphene as the strongest known material, so some of us are continuing their work on the mechanical properties and applications of graphene. We also have a project developing experiments and theory for crystal plasticity in metals."},{"type":"p","html":"What is your particular research on?"},{"type":"p","html":"I have two projects. My nano-related project aims to fabricate graphene composite materials. Although graphene is very strong, it is only a membrane with negligible bending stiffness. Trying to build a structure with graphene would be like trying to build something with Saran wrap. Combining graphene with a polymer would provide the graphene with some support and allow us to take advantage of its strength. Typically, this is done by dispersing graphene platelets in a polymer matrix, but these platelets are discontinuous, and the distribution and orientation of this graphene reinforcement is stochastic. We are developing a way to prescribe the 3D spatial arrangement of a continuous graphene network within a polymer matrix."},{"type":"p","html":"My other project is a collaboration with the Department of Surgery at Columbia University Medical Center. The goal of this project is to develop a growth-accommodating heart valve for pediatric patients. Currently, infants or children who need heart valve replacements will undergo open-heart surgery and receive valves that are fixed in size. The patient soon outgrows the valve and must return for another open-heart surgery to replace the valve with a larger one. Each surgery is traumatic, risky, and costly. Our proposed solution is an expandable heart valve that can be implanted once, and then subsequently dilated to accommodate the child's growth using transcatheter balloon dilation, which is a much less invasive procedure."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_160aa825c659479abbf9acdf19d0d149.jpg","width":1500,"height":1125,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Can you tell me about some potential future applications for your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"Strong graphene-based composites could be useful for lightweight armor and aircraft components. Since graphene also has superb electrical properties, one could also make a composite material that is both strong and conductive. For the heart valves, we want to save kids' lives and save their parents' $$$!"},{"type":"p","html":"How did you figure out you wanted to specialize in this area?"},{"type":"p","html":"I sort of haphazardly wandered into these subjects. I was just a relatively clueless master's student with zero research experience, and these happened to be the projects that were available. I don't think there is any discipline of physical engineering that I wouldn't like. Whether it's environmental engineering or materials engineering, it's all about drawing on the latest science to make new and interesting stuff. It's all very exciting. I wish I could do everything, but in terms of career and personal finances, I think it's prudent to pick just one (or two..maybe three?…)."},{"type":"p","html":"Are there any skills you learned in the Navy that you have found helpful in pursuing your PhD?"},{"type":"p","html":"Going to Afghanistan was like going to the wild west. The military had some infrastructure in place, but it was often slow and unreliable. Sometimes, the quickest way to get things done was to go around and make friends and barter if needed. It's similar in the research world. You can dig and dig through the literature for a solution, but often it's faster to go straight to the experts (or other users in the clean room) and ask."},{"type":"p","html":"One useful mindset that I picked up is that nothing is impossible. When the commander is asking for something, \"It can't be done\" is never an acceptable answer. The only question should be whether it is worth committing the time and resources required to get it done. The same applies for research work. Some problems seem insurmountable at first, but so far, I've found that if I dig deep enough in the literature or ask enough people, there's always a solution."},{"type":"p","html":"Where do you hope to take your career after you complete your PhD?"},{"type":"p","html":"When people ask me this question, my usual answer is that I plan to sell coconuts on the street. I am only half-joking. To me, the coconut vendor has a pretty good job because if he sells 100, then he knows he has made 100 people very happy. It's much tougher in the research world to know if your work will actually make an impact on people's lives. I'm aiming for something in-between, where I can do cutting-edge research and still see a more immediate and positive impact from my work. Currently, it seems like continuing with biomedical research is a good option, but I'm open to anything."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_e108fff7566c4db49febfea1b5ea10e2.jpg","width":1500,"height":1125,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What do you do for fun outside of your program?"},{"type":"p","html":"Hanging out with my wife and daughter, who is a toddler now. My daughter is sort of an adrenaline junkie, so it's fun (and exhausting) trying to keep her entertained. Also, I started surfing about three years ago. NYC actually has some pretty decent surf breaks over in the Rockaways. My goal is to surf like this guy: link."},{"type":"p","html":"If you could go back to the first day you started your graduate work and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?"},{"type":"p","html":"Stop trying to re-create your military life and move on. I read this somewhere in an article for transitioning veterans. I had been having trouble letting go of all the good things from my Navy time - sense of mission, camaraderie, travel, and adventure. I was trying unsuccessfully to find these in the civilian world, and it was making me bitter and dissatisfied. After reading that article, I realized that military service is a unique but temporary phase in life, like childhood or high school. It would better, and perhaps more Zen-like, to accept that. Then, with all my acquired military skills and experience, I could seek out ways to make the most of my next chapters in life. Plus, leaving the Navy was my choice, and I knew there were lots of things to look forward to with my newfound freedom. If there are any other veterans out there who are struggling like I was, I hope they also find this mindset to be helpful."},{"type":"p","html":"LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richli/"},{"type":"li","html":"Research Highlight"}]},{"slug":"facility-highlight-columbia-nano-initiative-shared-facilities","oldPath":"/post/facility-highlight-columbia-nano-initiative-shared-facilities","title":"Facility Highlight: Columbia Nano Initiative Shared Facilities ","date":"2019-08-11","author":null,"category":"Facility Highlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_78228a03a1454ed69c9e9119b898e18e.png","width":1695,"height":1125},"excerpt":"Updated: Aug 12, 2019","readingMinutes":6,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Updated: Aug 12, 2019"},{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers to give those interested a glimpse into the world of nanotechnology. Today we sit down with Dr. Nava Ariel-Sternberg, Director of the Columbia Nano Initiative (CNI) Shared Labs."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_e168dca255aa4bc0b95c7d17c56d479f_d_1920_1280_s_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Let’s start with you Dr. Ariel-Sternberg. Tell us about your role at Columbia University?"},{"type":"p","html":"Columbia Nano Initiative consist of shared laboratories providing access to cutting edge equipment in Nanoscience and engineering. I’m the Director of the CNI shared labs, overseeing the lab's operation, supervising the personnel who manages and maintains those labs, as well as looking over the lab’s safety, assisting with proposal writing, and am responsible for the labs budget."},{"type":"p","html":"Can you give us some insight into your educational and work history prior to coming to Columbia?"},{"type":"p","html":"I have 23 years of experience working in Nanotechnology and Nanofabrication specifically, out of them 8 years of labs management. My educational background consists of a B.Sc in Materials Science and a B.A. in Physics from the Technion in Haifa, Israel, and a Ph.D. In Materials Science from M.I.T. in Cambridge MA. After completing my Ph.D., I worked as a Process Integrator at Intel, R&D materials engineer at Elbit Electro-optics Systems, and I previously managed the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at Tel Aviv University, overseeing a similar labs cluster to the one at CNI."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_b04660a1e08140efba6344191de9dda7_d_1920_1280_s_2.png","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Can you describe what Columbia Nano Initiative is and how it came to be?"},{"type":"p","html":"$24e"},{"type":"p","html":"What are the facilities that fall under the Columbia Nano Initiative umbrella?"},{"type":"p","html":"$24f"},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_07aae96bf28d49d0af8f74efb26fa25f_d_1920_1280_s_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Can you give us an idea of who the users of the facilities typically are?"},{"type":"p","html":"The user base of the CNI facilities is highly versatile. In the fiscal year 2018-2019, we had over 100 research groups use our facilities. About 85% of our lab users are Columbia researchers and students, we have 2% of our lab users coming from other universities and government agencies, and the remaining 13% are from the private sector, mainly startup companies that are working in our labs."},{"type":"p","html":"Who maintains the facilities?"},{"type":"p","html":"$250"},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_55928982c4d64925bb5bce8df660c9eb_d_1920_1280_s_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What is the process like for someone who wants to start using the facility?"},{"type":"p","html":"An outside user who wishes to use our lab can either get trained on our equipment and gain direct access to the lab or request that our staff performs the research for them. Depending on the nature of the attachment, we have two legal agreements (one for each case) that the users need to sign. After that they can get a lab ID with which they are able to go through the safety training and access protocol for the lab itself. After they gain access to the lab they may begin training on specific pieces of equipment. We have a lot of information on our website: http://cni.columbia.edu/shared-labs."},{"type":"p","html":"Can you give us some examples of academic research that is going on in the facilities?"},{"type":"p","html":"$251"},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_eb15128d511e467e8b23e819f0c12d68_d_1920_1280_s_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Can you give us a few examples of industrial development that the labs facilitate?"},{"type":"p","html":"We have several startup companies working in our facilities as their R&D and prototyping lab. Lumiode is one of them, a startup company working on high-brightness micro-displays for augmented reality and other display applications. Firehouse Horology is another startup company utilizing the facility. They have developed silicon based hairsprings for watches with unique properties, using microfabrication and MEMS technology fabricated in our clean room. Chemeleon (formerly Drinksavvy) is another startup company working on a colorimetric sensing platform for various applications, including the rapid detection of the different date rape drugs, cerebral spinal fluid and more. Their technology combines nanophotonics and molecular recognition in a novel way to detect and signal via dramatic changes in colors on their sensor surfaces."},{"type":"p","html":"For more information on the CNI Shared facilities, we highly recommend attending the 2019 CNI Industry Day on September 5th, 2019. The event will highlight companies, entrepreneurs, faculty and other technical experts and discuss how their cutting-edge research is facilitated by the CNI Shared Labs. cniindustryday2019.splashthat.com"},{"type":"p","html":"CNI Website: http://cni.columbia.edu/shared-labs"},{"type":"p","html":"CNI Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Columbia-Nano-Initiative-188403285224992/"}]},{"slug":"meet-dr-shobhana-narasimhan-professor-of-theoretical-sciences","oldPath":"/post/meet-dr-shobhana-narasimhan-professor-of-theoretical-sciences","title":"Meet Dr. Shobhana Narasimhan: Professor of Theoretical Sciences","date":"2019-06-25","author":"Shruti Sharma","category":"Community Spotlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_1eb24113c4cd4c0d8c1e11ef963c8cc4.jpg","width":1440,"height":960},"excerpt":"Updated: Nov 25, 2019","readingMinutes":9,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Updated: Nov 25, 2019"},{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers to give those interested a glimpse into the world of nanotechnology. Today we sit down with Dr. Shobhana Narasimhan, Professor of Theoretical Sciences at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, India."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_1eb24113c4cd4c0d8c1e11ef963c8cc4.jpg","width":1440,"height":960,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us a little bit about where you are from."},{"type":"p","html":"I grew up in Bombay (now called Mumbai), where I lived until I was 22, then I moved to Boston for a PhD, then Brookhaven and Berlin for postdocs, and now I have been living in Bangalore for 22 years. So what is unique about them...well, apparently, I only live in towns that start with the letter 'B'! More seriously, though, I loved growing up in Bombay because it was lively and cosmopolitan. I had friends whose families hailed from all over India, and who belonged to several different religions...but it never seemed to matter, we never thought about language or religion or caste...or gender. Especially today, when I see divisiveness seemingly growing, not just in India but all over the world, I realize how valuable it was to have that kind of childhood and youth."},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us about your professional journey so far."},{"type":"p","html":"$252"},{"type":"p","html":"I went to the US thinking I'd do either particle physics or astrophysics. However, at Harvard I found all the condensed matter physicists much more approachable and I began to think I'd switch fields. That may not perhaps be the best reason to switch fields (though it's not necessarily a bad one), but in retrospect I'm glad I did so! I like the more 'hands on' aspect of condensed matter, and even though a lot of the work I do is quite theoretical, I like the fact that it may have real life applications."},{"type":"p","html":"I first started out doing surface physics. There were two reasons for this: this was the mid-1980s, and the scanning tunneling microscope had just been invented, and I found the STM images that were coming out so fascinating and so beautiful...I wanted to understand them and explain them. Also, I found it much easier to think in two dimensions than in three dimensions (and certainly easier than in the much higher-dimensional spaces of, say, string theory). I am someone who likes to think visually, in pictures...in fact, when we had aptitude tests in high school, based upon 'inventoried interests' they suggested I might want to become an artist! Then, as the years passed, making the transition from surface science to nanoscience seemed very natural and easy, as many people did the same thing."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_f6ca62a1e3a14e2a9883f84a8f44f16a.jpg","width":1440,"height":960,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What group are you leading now and what is the group’s overall focus? Can you tell us about some potential applications for your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"I head the Computational Nanoscience group at JNCASR. Our group works on the rational design of nanomaterials. Throughout history, humans have designed new materials (right from the time of the Bronze Age), but we have done so either by accident – trial and error – or through brute force approaches. We now are in a position where we can really try to understand why materials have the properties they do, and then use this understanding to design bespoke materials tailored for specific applications. We use ab initio density functional theory calculations for this. We work on a number of different applications: nanocatalysts for clean energy applications, magnetic materials for memory storage, etc."},{"type":"p","html":"We have done some cool stuff, for example we showed that if gold nanoparticles are deposited on an oxide substrate that has been doped with an electron donor, the morphology of the nanoparticles can be switched from a three-dimensional clumped-up one to a two-dimensional wetting one."},{"type":"p","html":"What Is the next big project you are planning to undertake?"},{"type":"p","html":"I am interested in developing descriptors for various properties of materials. Descriptors are various combinations of microscopic characteristics of a system that correlate with a macroscopic property of interest. To be useful, they should be much faster to compute than performing a density functional theory calculation or carrying out an experiment. We have already identified descriptors for the structure of self-assembled-monolayers of organic molecules on surfaces, for charge transfer when a 2D material is deposited on a metal substrate, etc. We would like to extend this work in the coming years, possibly using machine learning techniques."},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us about your previous role as the Dean of Academic Affairs. What was some rewarding/difficult experiences?"},{"type":"p","html":"Being Dean of Academic Affairs was rewarding and enlightening. At JNCASR, we only have graduate students. We are a small research institute: 56 faculty members and 350 graduate students. My time as Dean made me appreciate, even more, to what extent one's time as a PhD student is full of highs and lows – all the excitement and frustration characteristic of a life in research. One must prepare students for how to deal with these ups and downs. We teach them the science of course, but there is so much else we must teach them, that we sometimes neglect. I introduced an Orientation program for new students, some of it was fun (in a meaningful way), for example we had a drama therapist come and work with our freshman class about the tensions they were facing as they adapted to life in graduate school."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_20208e6d8cba46a9a6157fc9c0ed75f4.jpg","width":1440,"height":960,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us a bit about your work for promoting women in STEM. What organizations are you involved with, what's their mission, why it’s important to you, and what you do for them? Any stories you want to share about role and importance of mentorship in supporting women in STEM."},{"type":"p","html":"$253"},{"type":"p","html":"There are so many moving and inspiring stories from these workshops that I don't know which ones to share! Let me tell you one: at the first such workshop, Zipporah, a student from Kenya, met Arti, a professor from India. Zipporah said that she wanted to do a PhD but had no problems to work on. Arti said she had many ideas for problems, but not enough people to work on them. So, they decided to work together … and Zipporah visited Arti in India, and the work they did together, formed part of Zipporah's PhD thesis, she is now Dr. Zipporah Muthui! The women I have met at these workshops have sometimes overcome such enormous odds to succeed in physics...wars, huge family obstacles, illnesses...it is sheer determination and love of physics that has kept them going. I feel honored and privileged that I can do my little bit to help them."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_3dbf7cf34031444697179485c1699e55.jpg","width":1440,"height":960,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us about your experience of teaching physics in developing countries in Asia and Africa? What similarities/differences did you notice? Any students/stories that stand out?"},{"type":"p","html":"I have been involved with the Quantum ESPRESSO group as well as ASESMA (the African School for Electronic Structure Methods and Applications) in teaching solid state physics and Density Functional Theory in one-or-two-week-long workshops in Asia and Africa. It's immensely rewarding; even the little bit that I can teach over such a short period is met with such interest and enthusiasm. There is a great urge and thirst for learning in developing countries, but a lack of resources and a dearth of trained people who can teach."},{"type":"p","html":"Many of the students who attended the first few workshops are now themselves lecturers at colleges and mentoring the next generation of students. I am so proud of them. To mention just two of my former 'mentees' who are now themselves lecturers: Anne Justine Etindele from Cameroon, and Winfred Mueni from Kenya."},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us about your role in the Standing Committee on Women in Science of the Government of India."},{"type":"p","html":"The Government of India set up two committees...the National Task Force on Women in Science, and the Standing Committee on Women in Science, to advise the government on how it can promote the cause of women scientists. I was a member of both these committees. The committees have had a broad mandate, to make recommendations on how policy should be changed. It remains to be seen whether this makes a difference in reality, one should always be optimistic, I guess!"},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_464058fe85d14acc97023cd3e2e70038.jpg","width":1440,"height":960,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What do you do for fun outside of your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"I think I am quite a geek. I read a lot...mostly fiction, especially detective fiction, though recently I have also started reading some fantasy. I like to cook and bake, though I'm trying to do less of that lately, since I'm trying to switch to a low-carb diet! I belong to a quiz group, we meet every once in a while, to take part in madly competitive trivia quizzes. I'm interested in art, especially modern art, and I like to go to museums."},{"type":"p","html":"If you could go back in time, what advise will you give to your younger self?"},{"type":"p","html":"“Chill out!”. I think I was too stressed out much of the time. I always worried about not being a good enough student first, and then a good-enough scientist later. I wasted a lot of time and energy in being worried and depressed. It was only when I grew older that I recaptured the pure joy of doing science, which first attracted me to physics."},{"type":"p","html":"What advice/suggestions would you give to early career scientists in the nanoscience field?"},{"type":"p","html":"Try to sit back and look at your work from a distance, and look at the big picture (does that sound ironic? 'Big' picture for 'nano'science?!) Ask the big questions. Asking the little questions may raise your h-index but won't necessarily enable you to make the big breakthroughs. That is true for all science, not just nanoscience."},{"type":"p","html":"Researchgate: Link"},{"type":"li","html":"Research Highlight"}]},{"slug":"meet-cicely-shillingford-chemistry-phd-student","oldPath":"/post/meet-cicely-shillingford-chemistry-phd-student","title":"Meet Cicely Shillingford: Chemistry PhD Student","date":"2019-05-23","author":null,"category":"Community Spotlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_688706782b514f2c9724815813f87673_d_4096_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1350},"excerpt":"Updated: Nov 25, 2019","readingMinutes":9,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Updated: Nov 25, 2019"},{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Cicely Shillingford, a 4th year PhD student in the Chemistry Department at New York University (NYU)."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_688706782b514f2c9724815813f87673_d_4096_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1350,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us a little bit about where you are from."},{"type":"p","html":"I was born in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada and lived there until I was 13, after which my family relocated to San Antonio, Texas. Growing up in Mississauga was wonderful; my upbringing was enriched with culture from my parents’ Caribbean heritage, as Toronto is quite a multicultural city. My mother is from Trinidad and my father is from Dominica, so we travelled to the Caribbean often. In some ways, Trinidad also feels like home. I am the product of a very liberal and active upbringing in which my parents were determined to provide me with educational and social opportunities that they could not access. As a result, I played lots of sports, excelled in gymnastics and cheerleading, and was driven to science museums for as long as I can remember."},{"type":"p","html":"Where did you complete your undergraduate and any graduate degrees prior to this one?"},{"type":"p","html":"My undergraduate degree is a Bachelor’s of Science from the University of Waterloo (Canada). I majored in biochemistry and completed a research thesis on structural biochemistry, whereby I studied computational modeling of mutant fibronectin protein domains. I also participated in the university’s world-renowned co-operative education program, whereby students alternate between work and academic terms for 5 years. I completed ¾ co-op terms at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering working under the supervision of Joanna Aizenberg. This was the inception of my research experiences in materials science and nanotechnology. More on this later!"},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_c1ecd174da984843af9e31eb77f22291_d_4096_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1350,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What is your current status as a graduate student?"},{"type":"p","html":"I am at the tail end of my 4th year at NYU and my research is in the fields of physical chemistry and materials science. My plan and hope is to wrap up in December of 2020."},{"type":"p","html":"What group are you in and what is the group’s overall focus?"},{"type":"p","html":"I work for Marcus Weck who is a polymer chemist by training. We are a diverse group of polymer and material scientists divided into three subgroups: 1) designing helical and sheet forming polymers that mimic protein secondary structures 2) multicompartment micelles and nanoreactors for heterogeneous catalysis and 3) colloidal synthesis, assembly, and crystallization. The threads that unify us are polymers and self-assembly, but each subgroup operates on a different length scale from angstroms to microns."},{"type":"p","html":"What is your particular research on?"},{"type":"p","html":"My research focuses on the self-assembly and crystallization of colloids. In my work, colloidal crystals and complexly shaped building blocks are fabricated via capillary assembly of colloidal particles onto nano-patterned surfaces, a method that has dramatically accelerated the production of precisely structured colloidal arrays and superstructures. Whereby particles of numerous shapes and chemical compositions are driven into patterns by the capillary force, the same force responsible for ring-shaped stains garnered from spilled coffee. I have developed various advances in templated capillary assembly, in which I unite exact spatial arrangement of colloids with post-assembly applications."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_4fb200588b2b45e4aa7c6c68ddaf1a68_d_4096_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1350,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Can you tell me about some potential future applications for your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"The hierarchical self-assembly of building blocks into useful structures is present in many natural and man-made systems. For example, fibers assemble into threads, which themselves weave into fabric, which is sewn into clothing. Colloidal chemistry has long been used as a model for nature's hierarchical assembly processes. Unremarkable on their own, these micron-sized spheres exhibit a cornucopia of remarkable properties when assembled into crystals. Colloidal crystals can emit iridescent color akin to opals, deriving from the same optical principles that cause the sun to appear red when it moves through colloidal water droplets in the air (i.e. clouds) at sunset. This colorimetric feature of colloidal crystals makes them useful for developing technologies such as optical sensors, non-chemical pigments for aesthetic applications, and screens that can emit color with only the input of light, not electricity."},{"type":"p","html":"How did you figure out you wanted to specialize in this area?"},{"type":"p","html":"I slipped into it, literally. My first research project was developing a material called SLIPS (slippery liquid infused porous surfaces) at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. I was applying slippery surface coatings to fabrics, based off of the nanostructure of the carnivorous pitcher plant. It was during this project that I was introduced to colloids; I grew particles onto the surface of the fabric to create nanoscale roughness. I deeply enjoyed working on applied projects that I could explain to my parents, but since I was studying biochemistry during my undergraduate I had a lot to learn about chemistry and materials. When I applied to graduate schools, I decided that I wanted to work on more theoretical projects and tackle materials synthesis from the perspective of a chemist."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_69471bd97713479c8222ee31898e33e8_d_4096_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1350,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"You are the current President of the Chemist Club at NYU. Can you tell us what the Chemist Club is and what kinds of activities the Club participates in at NYU?"},{"type":"p","html":"$254"},{"type":"p","html":"You have had two different stints at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering in Boston. Can you tell us a bit more about those experiences?"},{"type":"p","html":"$255"},{"type":"p","html":"Can you give us a little background on the World Science Festival and how you are involved with them?"},{"type":"p","html":"The World Science Festival hosts science extravaganzas worldwide to help younger generations and the public to appreciate the global impacts of science and technology. I specifically volunteer for their City of Science program, which is a compilation of travelling hands on exhibits ensuing an all day festival that rotates throughout the five boroughs of NYC, and has recently expanded to Westchester and New Jersey. I love this event because it gives me the opportunity to show kids of colour that they too can be scientists and be the role model that I never had growing up. I manage the biomimicry exhibit, of course! I have even been able to incorporate some of my own bio-inspired research into the activities. Five times a year I teach kids things such as how Velcro was invented from a Swiss engineer based on burdock burrs, and then I suit kids up with Velcro kneepads and gloves and watch as they hilariously struggle to crawl across a Velcro obstacle course for 8 hours!"},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_f5bbd7903fd245829a8996dc715e1127_d_4096_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1350,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Where do you hope to take your career in the next 5 or 10 years?"},{"type":"p","html":"$256"},{"type":"p","html":"What do you do for fun outside of your program?"},{"type":"p","html":"Trust me, watching kids wipe out on a Velcro floor for 8 hours IS fun! For real though, I am very active with yoga and weight lifting, I even used to help coach the NYU cheerleading team. I have made great friendships within graduate school and the Chemists’ Club and we socialize frequently. I believe I have maintained a fairly reasonable work-life balance and have been able to enjoy all the New York City has to offer! I adore the Monday night movies in Bryant Park, I have an ever-growing stack of Broadway playbills, and I travel on weekends as often as I can. I am originally from Toronto so I go to Canada a lot, and my family is Caribbean so I am a total beach bum!"},{"type":"p","html":"If you could go back to the first day you started your graduate work and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?"},{"type":"p","html":"Not to take graduate school too seriously, it is really a means to an end academically. Also, I would have told myself to be empowered enough to meet with my advisor when I needed guidance and assert myself earlier on. It is very easy to be swept up into the competitiveness of comparing your productivity with other people in the department and/or research group. I have learned that I need to own my chosen quality of life and not worry about how many papers other people are publishing and how many hours they are putting in. We all have different needs, expectations, and circumstances. Graduate school, above all, is a rare chance in life to have work flexibility, creativity, and pursue opportunities for public service. Extracurricular activities and civic engagement should be encouraged and are nothing to be ashamed of; there is more to life than any individual’s specific project. As scientists, we have a responsibility to change the public perception of science and diversify the STEM populace!"},{"type":"p","html":"LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cshillingford/"},{"type":"li","html":"Research Highlight"}]},{"slug":"stem-phds-as-data-scientists","oldPath":"/post/stem-phds-as-data-scientists","title":"STEM PhDs as Data Scientists","date":"2019-05-13","author":"Frederick Pearsall","category":"Career Information","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_8b1c64c38eeb4a9d843dc42fbbad317d.png","width":1502,"height":1002},"excerpt":"Updated: May 14, 2019","readingMinutes":7,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Updated: May 14, 2019"},{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC is beginning a new series of blog posts focused on exploring alternative career paths for those with backgrounds in STEM, including those with research or industry experience in nanotechnology. This post, kicks off the new blog series. The post was written by Frederick Pearsall with help with Shruti Sharma and Jacob Trevino."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_8b1c64c38eeb4a9d843dc42fbbad317d.png","width":1502,"height":1002,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"$257"},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_9ab28dbb459d469885a877243c034a90_d_4096_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1350,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Now, I could delve into some more statistics and metrics but just what does a data scientist do? Where do they work? The inside of my head started to look like the 3D projection in the image below. I was confused, and I wanted some clarity. We reached out to two incredible PhDs in STEM currently working as data scientists, in hopes of clearing things up. This post is meant to allow you the reader to gain insight on data science as a career option for those with a STEM background. Both interviewees have positions in industry and gave some great advice on how to get some hands-on experience and break into the field."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_2bc3f7b748f74cb3b041e0158f1bd032_d_4096_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1350,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"The Interviews"},{"type":"p","html":"Nikita Butakov received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from UC Santa Barbara in 2018. He is a Data Scientist with Ericsson’s Global AI Accelerator in Silicon Valley. Ericsson is a multinational networking and telecommunications company, responsible for managing over a third of the mobile phone infrastructure market. Their AI accelerator identifies data-science and artificial-intelligence use cases, within Ericsson, and helps accelerate the deployment of production-level solutions."},{"type":"p","html":"Bernard Hishamunda received his PhD in Physics from Brandeis University in 2017. He is a Senior Strategy Consultant/Data Scientist at IBM. IBM works with technologies like AI, cloud, blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) to help their clients transform their industries."},{"type":"p","html":"What does a normal day look like for you?"},{"type":"p","html":"Bernard: It is split evenly. 50% consulting work and 50% writing code (data analytics)."},{"type":"p","html":"Nikita: A typical day starts off with a brief meeting within our team to discuss our daily goals. The rest of my work day can involve any number of activities, including programming, reading textbooks or papers, interviewing candidates (we’re heavily recruiting right now!) or engineering machine learning models."},{"type":"p","html":"What was your career path from your PhD to where you are today, noting any key transition points?"},{"type":"p","html":"Bernard: I was already familiar with coding and advanced analytics through my academic training. I took big data courses to understand what the field was about. I took online tutorials and worked on data science related projects. I joined business consulting groups for insights into solving business problems while also participating in consulting competitions."},{"type":"p","html":"Nikita: Throughout my PhD I worked on side-projects in software engineering and data science, but I reached a key transition point towards the end, when I made the decision to pursue a data science career, rather than continue in academia."},{"type":"p","html":"Was this a goal of yours while doing your PhD?"},{"type":"p","html":"Bernard: My initial goal was to work in big pharma as a liaison between scientists and business leaders, or work for consulting companies (consulting because work changes frequently unlike in academia) on solving business challenges."},{"type":"p","html":"Nikita: My PhD goals included publishing papers in high-impact journals, presenting at high-impact conferences, and, perhaps most importantly, figure out what kind of career I want to have post-PhD."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_1b9c3ad18fa648468aae63ed82347539_d_4096_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1350,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What was the biggest challenge in making the switch to your current role?"},{"type":"p","html":"Bernard: Relying on other people to get your work done. Lack of academic rigor (when it comes to results) in industry (i.e. deliver quicker/faster solutions but not as thoroughly as required in academia)."},{"type":"p","html":"Nikita: Breaking into the Bay Area’s highly competitive data science job market was a challenge, that took a lot of work to overcome."},{"type":"p","html":"What skill(s) do you rely on most on a daily basis?"},{"type":"p","html":"Bernard: Data analytics, coding, communication, problem solving."},{"type":"p","html":"Nikita: The independent research skills and lessons I learned during my PhD."},{"type":"p","html":"What could a PhD student who is not in a data science program do during their PhD to better prepare them to have data science be a career option?"},{"type":"p","html":"Bernard: Take intro courses on data science topics, be familiar with the basics (supervised, unsupervised machine learning). Learn the basic ML approaches (regression, decision trees, clustering) and have some general knowledge on advanced methods such as neural networks, deep learning etc."},{"type":"p","html":"Another great way to better prepare is to work on several data science projects. Kaggle is a good place to start, OpenAI has a good repo of datasets you can work with, and there are more out there as well. Follow analyticsVidhya and kdnuggets for tutorials and articles on ML and AI in general."},{"type":"p","html":"Nikita: Take coursework in the Statistics and Computer Science departments. Join a Data Science club at your university. Work on Kaggle competitions and other side-projects. If you don’t have much free time during your PhD, consider joining a PhD-oriented boot-camp program like Insight."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_09d75c1297234c3e81a2838cb412a358.png","width":1512,"height":1125,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"There are lots of options advertised out there to learn the data science fundamentals like boot camps, online programs both paid and free, part-time degreed programs, etc. Which of these are worth pursuing and are they valued by a hiring manager?"},{"type":"p","html":"Bernard: Hiring managers value experience, not so much courses. Work on 3 or more data science projects. Makes sure the projects are diverse to show an array of skills in the domain. Online programs are a good asset, but use them to get you the foundations, then practice on any of the datasets found online or come up with a project you think interests you where you can apply data science techniques."},{"type":"p","html":"Nikita: Many of my colleagues have joined the Insight Data Science Fellowship after earning their PhDs and have great things to say. Insight is one of the most established data science boot camps and has a strong internal network. Since Insight makes money by acting as a hiring agency, it doesn’t charge its fellows any fees. Although I have heard good stories about non-PhDs experiences in paid boot-camps, I would be wary of a joining such a program if you already have a PhD. At this point, you should be able to learn everything you need to know on your own."},{"type":"p","html":"If you have any other general comments that you think would be good advice or useful information for someone thinking about moving into a data science career, you can write them here."},{"type":"p","html":"Bernard: Affiliation with DS groups, possessing real life experience some of which can be acquired through meetup projects, DataKind projects, academic projects or internships will be more valued than having taken courses."},{"type":"p","html":"Nikita: Network! Send me a connection request on LinkedIn with a short note introducing yourself. Follow me on Quora, where I write about data science, nanotechnology, and graduate school."},{"type":"p","html":"FIN"},{"type":"p","html":"In summary, it seems like the best way to become a data scientist is to learn the foundations of machine learning and its approaches, then to put them into practice. To me, this is equivalent to research experience and depending on just how much ML and data science modeling you already have done in your PhD you may not need as many completed projects. However, if you plan to go into industry it pays to have projects with a keen eye on product development, especially if you know which companies you’d like to work for. Also, check out the free data bootcamps the both Bernard and Nikita mentioned. Two are listed at the end of this post."},{"type":"p","html":"My romanticized view of “all possibilities with data” is clearly not business oriented, a point which is emphasized by Bernard. This is true no matter what industry you are in. I think to be more fulfilled in a data scientist role, one must enjoy performing quantitative analyses, explaining them, and forming actionable recommendations on just about any challenge involving big data. Oh, and you must also enjoy working with lots and lots and lots of data."},{"type":"p","html":"Bootcamps"},{"type":"p","html":"https://www.insightdatascience.com/"},{"type":"p","html":"https://www.thedataincubator.com/"},{"type":"p","html":"References"},{"type":"p","html":"Glassdoor.com"},{"type":"p","html":"Serious Data Analytics with Palantir"},{"type":"p","html":"About the author:"},{"type":"p","html":"Dr. Frederick Pearsall is a recent graduate from the City University of New York , holding a PhD in Chemistry and Materials Science. Currently he is a Solutions Architect at Nanotronics Imaging in Brooklyn, NY"},{"type":"li","html":"Career Information"}]},{"slug":"meet-jasmine-sabio-nanofabrication-process-engineer","oldPath":"/post/meet-jasmine-sabio-nanofabrication-process-engineer","title":"Meet Jasmine Sabio: Nanofabrication Process Engineer","date":"2019-04-04","author":null,"category":"Community Spotlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_ea7d7b6b5c5f4af1a6794deb17168f7e_d_2959_1973_s_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200},"excerpt":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Jasmine Sabio, a Nanofabrication…","readingMinutes":6,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Jasmine Sabio, a Nanofabrication Process Engineer at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center Nanofabrication Facility."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_ea7d7b6b5c5f4af1a6794deb17168f7e_d_2959_1973_s_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us a little bit about where you are from."},{"type":"p","html":"I was born in Long Island, New York but was raised in Huntsville, Alabama. I circled back to New York after ~20 years in Alabama; however, I don't remember New York too much since my family moved to Alabama when I was really young. So for those who think I come from a one-stoplight kind of town, you may be surprised. Huntsville has a rich history and presence in engineering (NASA, Boeing) and was actually recently ranked 3rd in high tech jobs."},{"type":"p","html":"Where did you complete your undergraduate and any graduate degrees prior to this one?"},{"type":"p","html":"I received my B.S. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Alabama and my M.S. in Chemical Engineering at New York University."},{"type":"p","html":"How was your transition from Alabama to NYC?"},{"type":"p","html":"I get this question a lot - it's a justified curiosity because Alabama is very different from NYC. For me, the change was easy. I complement the fast paced milieu that NYC thrives on. It also helped that I did a summer abroad before I moved to NYC. For 6 weeks, I was visiting 6 new cities and countries and had to learn to quickly assimilate to a new culture, language and surroundings. By the time I made it to NYC, moving around was a breeze because everything was in English."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_bb583cd56a734bdab5dc35623002ab54_d_2944_1963_s_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What was your master’s research on at NYU? What kinds of applications are there for it?"},{"type":"p","html":"At NYU, and under the supervision of Dr. Hartman, I had a goal to study the dissociation of methane at moderate temperatures, opposed to traditionally high temperatures. A palladium carbon-carbon cross-coupling reaction was chosen for the study and I was tasked with designing and fabricating a microfluidic device to serve as a platform to study the reaction. The success of this study would give us insight on what parameters can dissociate methane at low and moderate temperatures which in turn would feed a much larger scale application: safely and efficiently controlling methane emissions that are contributing to global warming."},{"type":"p","html":"How did you figure out you wanted to specialize in this area?"},{"type":"p","html":"I owe my passion and enthusiasm to Dr. Hartman. With his guidance and mentorship, he exposed me to the field of microfluidics and nanofabrication which I wouldn't have gained on my own. Then through exposure and experience, my excitement and curiosity in the field grew."},{"type":"p","html":"Tell me about your current occupation. What are your main responsibilities and what does a day look like for you?"},{"type":"p","html":"I'm currently a Nanofabrication Process Engineer at the Advanced Science Research Center. In the nanofabrication facility, we hold over 30 nanofabrication tools that over 500 users utilize. With the rest of the nanofabrication support staff, we maintain the operation of the tools and lab along with training users on how to use the tools. Aside from maintenance, I like to think of myself as a research shaman for the users. I offer my input and expertise to users as they move through their processing to help point them in the right direction."},{"type":"p","html":"I also have my own projects and collaborations. I'm remotely processing microfluidic molds and chips for Columbia University and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, collaborating with Dr. Shereen from the Neuroscience Initiative of the ASRC to improve Diffusion Tensor Imaging in MRI, and continuously involved with the extensive outreach that is held at the ASRC. So a typical day for me starts with making sure the users of the ASRC are ready and equipped with what they need for their processing and the rest of my time is dedicated to my side projects."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_c60a08030a2343b8882465418a58d397_d_2959_1959_s_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1192,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"How did you come into being a Nanofabrication Process Engineer? Was it something you thought you would do in the future while going through school?"},{"type":"p","html":"At NYU, I spent about a year working and completing my research in the very same nanofabrication lab I'm a process engineer for. As my masters came to an end and I was struggling to find a job, the current director of the nanofabrication facility, Dr. Trevino, encouraged me to apply as a nanofabrication process engineer at the ASRC. Three months later, I joined the nanofab staff and have been at the ASRC for about a year and a half now."},{"type":"p","html":"As I was going through school, life after school wasn't something I was planning - all my time and energy was expelled on wrapping up my project before I graduated. However, when I was conducting my research at the nanofab, I was always interested in more than my own work and was proactive in helping out in the lab. So when I graduated and moved into a staff position at the ASRC, my job responsibilities felt organic and intuitive."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_1fb3f45b9fe84d829b212a134b659ff2_d_3000_2000_s_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Where do you hope to take your career in the next 5 or 10 years?"},{"type":"p","html":"I plan to elevate my engineering experience and expertise with a JD to open up a pathway towards transactional law with a specialty in intellectual property, specifically in the nanotech community. My current position as a process engineer has given me a curiosity and affinity towards the inner workings of bringing an idea from design to product, especially the protection of those ideas with patents. I'm currently planning to start law school fall of 2020."},{"type":"p","html":"What do you do for fun outside of your program? Do you have any hobbies or other causes you spend time on?"},{"type":"p","html":"Outside of work and traveling and studying for the LSAT, I like to spend my extra time giving back to the community. I join volunteering projects from New York Cares and use that platform to expand my network and opportunities for volunteering. Through New York Cares I became involved with Meals on Wheels and the soup kitchen at The Church of the Village. Through Meals on Wheels, I became involved with Encore Community Services who matched me with a 95 year old who I see weekly to play scrabble, listen to records, and sip on rum and cokes."},{"type":"p","html":"Socially, you can find me at restaurants and music shows. As an aspiring food connoisseur, I love adventuring through all the restaurants and cuisines that NYC holds. As with music and being in NYC, upcoming and current artists are always passing through NYC - there's rarely a weekend when there isn't a DJ or band I like is playing."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_26148808ad1f44da9af0ecbf375a7101_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"I know you also spend some of your time in mentoring and outreach roles. How did you get into doing those activities?"},{"type":"p","html":"At Alabama, I was constantly exposed to mentorship and outreach opportunities through the clubs and organizations I was involved in. This ranged from tutoring to in-class demonstrations at local schools. At NYU, I continued my mentorship with a student from Brooklyn Technical High School for two years and now she’s a Chemical Engineering major at Columbia University. In my current position, I have plans to mentor an Ossining High School student over the summer and school year. As I write this, I'm surprised at the evolution of my outreach which all stems from me randomly being involved in clubs as an undergrad. When I was in high school, I had no idea that I'd be an engineer nor did I really know about the field - it wasn't very intuitive. I like mentorship and engaging with high school students because it is something I wish I had when I was younger."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_bce68541bbf44fcd823896c6506f3900_d_2949_1944_s_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1187,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"If you could go back to the first day you started your academic journey and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?"},{"type":"p","html":"I wish I could've told younger Jasmine to not be afraid to ask questions. As I've grown older, I've learned that every opportunity is a learning opportunity. The opportunity to learn can be initiated by asking probing questions. This self-engagement yields higher retention on the new or abstract subject and who knows, can make something seem boring really interesting."},{"type":"p","html":"LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasmine-sabio-57931675/"},{"type":"li","html":"Research Highlight"}]},{"slug":"meet-frederick-pearsall-chemistry-phd-student","oldPath":"/post/meet-frederick-pearsall-chemistry-phd-student","title":"Meet Frederick Pearsall: Chemistry PhD Student","date":"2019-02-03","author":null,"category":"Community Spotlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_912581c097264e648666b5991dafec3c_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200},"excerpt":"Updated: Apr 9, 2019","readingMinutes":8,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Updated: Apr 9, 2019"},{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Frederick Pearsall, a 5th year PhD student in the Chemistry Department at Graduate Center, City University of New York."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_912581c097264e648666b5991dafec3c_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us a little bit about where you are from."},{"type":"p","html":"Hello Jacob! Thanks for taking the time to sit down with me. I’m very excited about the community you’re building with n2yc and am even more excited to be a part of it. I’ve lived in New York almost my entire life and traveled east as I grew up. I started in Sunset Park, Brooklyn then Glendale, Queens. Finally, and this is where I spent most of my time growing up, I moved to Nassau County, Long Island. The town is called Franklin Square and it’s one of the many small neighborhoods stuck together on (that’s right on) the Island. It’s suburban, with the need to drive just about anywhere, quiet, with large backyards and houses. I enjoyed the calmer aspects growing up and the city was a train ride away; I was able to visit occasionally for concerts and events. While growing up I thought about how I would like to return to New York one day."},{"type":"p","html":"Where did you complete your undergraduate and any graduate degrees prior to this one?"},{"type":"p","html":"I attended Stony Brook University for a BSc in chemistry, which was a great experience academically and personally. The courses I took really prepared me for graduate school, and I owe a lot to the community of professors who mentored me during my time as a teaching assistant and undergraduate researcher. A lot of my memorable experiences come from undergraduate research and the SBU fencing team. My undergraduate mentor, Fernando Raineri, was a great support and is a major reason why I became interested in obtaining a PhD. As for fencing, I joined the team and fell in love immediately (with foil of course), eventually becoming a coach and executive board member, organizing trips, competitions and scheduling events."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_2559a47220c54bf588693e8be6a3454e_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What is your current status as a graduate student?"},{"type":"p","html":"I am in my last semester of the five-year Nanotechnology and Materials Science PhD program at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. I will graduate in May 2019 and am incredibly excited for the next stage in my career."},{"type":"p","html":"What group are you in and what is the group’s overall focus?"},{"type":"p","html":"In 2014 I joined Professor Stephen O’Brien’s group at the Center for Discovery and Innovation, located at CUNY’s West Harlem campus. Our groups’ focus and mission are the application of nanotechnology to advancements in energy and data storage. We value integration into existing device paradigms, “R&D within the context of economic reality.” Specifically, we use scalable chemical solution processing methods to synthesize unique nanoscale compounds and characterize their structural, electronic, magnetic and other properties. You can find out more about our group here: https://www.obrien-research.org/."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_923c9c2707c64d5abcc23e47eee224d2_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What is your particular research on?"},{"type":"p","html":"$258"},{"type":"p","html":"Can you tell me about some potential future applications for your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"The materials and devices I work on have applications in energy and data storage. I fabricate capacitors which may be used as incorporated power conversion components, that can be manufactured simultaneously with printed circuit-boards (PCBs). In other words, by incorporating these capacitors, there’s plenty more room for other components, such as processors, resistors and more on a PCB. My other work is on multiferroics and it has applications in computer memory and data storage, which takes advantage of the interaction between magnetic and electronic properties present within a single material. Researchers are looking for coupling behavior between these properties, which would allow for 4-bit data storage, non-volatile memory advancements, and improved spintronics applications. Companies as large as Intel, prompted by miniaturization issues such as the self-fulfilling prophecy of Moore’s Law, are working on devices which take full advantage of coupled multiferroics."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_daa3d2d702574f36977a00e84a42d010_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"How did you figure out you wanted to specialize in this area?"},{"type":"p","html":"Even as an organic chemist at Stony Brook, nanotechnology fascinated me. I enjoy putting together desktop computers; seeing the individual components such as processors and graphics cards is exciting. I am intrigued by the materials and methods used to create these electronics. Thus, one major reason I chose the chemistry PhD program at the City University of New York is its Nanotechnology and Materials Science track. This allowed me to continue using my chemistry training together with nanotech to develop my own materials and methods. Going to CUNY was also incredibly timely, as the Advanced Science Research Center class 100 clean room had just been completed when I joined my group. I had the chance to learn nanomanufacturing processes at this state-of-the-art nanofabrication facility."},{"type":"p","html":"You were previously a NanoFab Fellow at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center. Tell us what that was like and what you took from it."},{"type":"p","html":"The NanoFab Fellowship offered at the Advanced Science Research Center is an incredible opportunity. As I mentioned before, I am interested in clean room and nanofabrication techniques. For the fellowship I train and consult users on what processes are available to them and write standard operating procedures for certain instruments. The main instrument I worked with is the Bruker Dimension FastScan AFM. What I enjoyed the most about the NanoFab Fellowship is the credited instrument time I received. Using this, I was able to use and learn all the equipment, something that is extremely rare at many universities and has drastically expanded my professional skills portfolio. The facility is available to all researchers and is something I highly recommend learning about and incorporating into your own work. If you have any questions about the ASRC NanoFab, please don’t hesitate to contact me."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_3734763aa92641409b7bd7ee2d2ce26a_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"You are the University Chapter President of the CUNY Materials Research Society student chapter. Tell us about your experience with that and about the what the local MRS chapter does."},{"type":"p","html":"$259"},{"type":"p","html":"In addition to your PhD research, you are working with a company here in NYC. Tell us a bit about that experience."},{"type":"p","html":"$25a"},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_f1117b5d920f4feb92bddf0418d75570_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Where do you hope to take your career in the next 5 or 10 years?"},{"type":"p","html":"In the coming years I want to apply my PhD training into something business and finance related such as consulting or investing. I’m quite interested in learning new things so I would like to work in a dynamic role, leading and managing teams of people. My largest goal is to combine and sharpen my technical and diffuse skills, at a company whose purpose I strongly believe in. It is a dream of mine to start my own companies, which I plan to do using what I have learned along the way."},{"type":"p","html":"What do you do for fun outside of your program?"},{"type":"p","html":"I enjoy going to museums such as the American Museum of Natural History for exhibits and events, where I can learn something that is often unrelated to my PhD work. I enjoy meeting new people with different personal and academic backgrounds, and I am always pushing myself to learn about what interests me. I spend a lot of time reading and using online learning platforms as well. My all-time favorite thing to do is writing and performing music."},{"type":"p","html":"If you could go back to the first day you started your graduate work and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?"},{"type":"p","html":"Over time I’ve learned a person should experience as much as possible in order to find what they want and don’t want. I would say to myself, don’t be afraid to take on any new challenges, as they are all opportunities to grow. I would also tell myself to be patient, as all great things take time. I know that’s two things, but younger me would appreciate it."},{"type":"p","html":"LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frederick-a-pearsall-39159583/"},{"type":"p","html":"Twitter: https://twitter.com/fredbrobro"},{"type":"p","html":"Email: pearsall.frederick@gmail.com"},{"type":"li","html":"Research Highlight"}]},{"slug":"meet-ingrid-paredes-chemical-engineering-phd-student","oldPath":"/post/meet-ingrid-paredes-chemical-engineering-phd-student","title":"Meet Ingrid Paredes: Chemical Engineering PhD Student","date":"2019-01-20","author":null,"category":"Community Spotlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_6048754afba54a8e82ecbea7c06ed78c_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200},"excerpt":"Updated: Jan 22, 2019","readingMinutes":4,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Updated: Jan 22, 2019"},{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Ingrid Paredes, a 3rd year PhD student in the Chemical Engineering Department at NYU Tandon."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_6048754afba54a8e82ecbea7c06ed78c_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us a little bit about where you are from."},{"type":"p","html":"I grew up across the Hudson in Jersey City, New Jersey. It’s a big city known for its diversity - actually, we were recently named the most diverse city in the country."},{"type":"p","html":"Where did you complete your undergraduate and any graduate degrees prior to this one?"},{"type":"p","html":"I completed both my B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemical and biochemical engineering at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. I minored in English literature - I loved both writing and chemistry growing up, and so in college I looked for opportunities that would allow me to do both. Actually, I decided to pursue research because of the school’s newspaper - my sophomore year, my friends and I started its science section. My first interview was my first conversation with researchers about their work, and I was inspired by the genuine curiosity and drive I saw in each of them. I applied to positions for that summer and landed in Dr. Benjamin Glasser’s lab, where I’d stay for my B.S. and M.S. theses. The focus of my research was to gain fundamental understanding of the transport phenomena behind rotary calcination, a heat treatment used in preparation of industrial catalysts."},{"type":"p","html":"What is your current status as a graduate student?"},{"type":"p","html":"I am a third year PhD student in chemical engineering at NYU Tandon. I plan to graduate by May 2021."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_8c9d087667134eb095323b113ffcc940_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What group are you in and what is the group’s overall focus?"},{"type":"p","html":"I am a part of the Hybrid Nanomaterials Laboratory led by Dr. Ayash Sahu. Our group studies the transport of heat, mass, and charge at the nanoscale in hopes of designing devices for energy harvesting."},{"type":"p","html":"What is your particular research on?"},{"type":"p","html":"The focus of my research is the development of reliable, solution-based synthesis routes towards sustainable hybrid nanomaterials."},{"type":"p","html":"Can you tell me about some potential future applications for your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"Currently, the optoelectronic industry is dominated by semiconductors comprising of rare, expensive elements that are difficult to process. Overall, they are unsuitable for large scale commercialization. Our energy demand, though, is growing with our population. To meet that growing demand in a sustainable fashion, we can synthesize materials that behave comparatively to current commercial systems but come from elements that are abundant and recyclable."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_d0e84f239cf84e868860f8525e558e2f_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"How did you figure out you wanted to specialize in this area?"},{"type":"p","html":"Fashion! In high school, I found a book called Techno Textiles at Strand. It outlined recent developments on the intersection of fashion and technology. I began to follow news about the topic, gaining interest in materials science and nanotechnology over the years - so when I spoke with Ayash about his work as a first year student, I was super excited from the start. I actually keep that book on my desk at work."},{"type":"p","html":"You are a community organizer for the March for Science's NYC satellite. Tell us a bit about their mission, why it’s important to you, and what you do for them as a community organizer?"},{"type":"p","html":"March for Science is a nonpartisan group that calls for evidence-based policy and science for the common good. Since the first D.C. march in 2017, the movement has inspired hundreds of satellites nationwide. In NYC, our goals are to mobilize the scientific community (less than half of STEM students nationwide voted in the 2016 election!) and educate the public about science-based issues. We do this by organizing outreach events targeted at adults, like science fair happy hours, voter information nights, and our city-wide march and teach-in."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_503ca6d2b9364e05bd3e0fa8b570923c_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"You do a bit of blog writing for Physics World and GradHacker. Can you tell us a bit about that and why you do it?"},{"type":"p","html":"As a student contributor for Physics World, I write research updates related to nanotechnology and peer-edit articles written by other students contributors. The opportunity allows me to stay up to date with research in my field while keeping up with writing. I love the challenge of taking the science out to a broader audience than the scientific community."},{"type":"p","html":"For GradHacker, my writing is more personal - the blog publishes advice and personal essays by graduate students. I appreciate that it allows me to take some time to reflect on some of my experiences as a grad student, like mentorship and organizing for March for Science."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_05376e5ef70548939f51915a2b9d2874_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Where do you hope to take your career in the next 5 or 10 years?"},{"type":"p","html":"I’d love to stay in academia as a professor. I’m incredibly fortunate to have had supportive mentors throughout my career, and I hope to provide the same opportunity for students in the future."},{"type":"p","html":"What do you do for fun outside of your program?"},{"type":"p","html":"I love exploring the city - you can’t be bored here, and time on the subway is time for reading. I’ve always loved music - I play the piano - and have been going to plenty of shows since I’ve moved here."},{"type":"p","html":"If you could go back to the first day you started your graduate work and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?"},{"type":"p","html":"Expect to make mistakes and to sometimes fail - be patient and learn from those experiences."},{"type":"p","html":"Twitter: https://twitter.com/ingridjoylyn"},{"type":"p","html":"LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ingridjparedes/"},{"type":"li","html":"Research Highlight"}]},{"slug":"meet-francesco-lavini-physics-phd-student","oldPath":"/post/meet-francesco-lavini-physics-phd-student","title":"Meet Francesco Lavini: Physics PhD Student","date":"2018-12-12","author":null,"category":"Community Spotlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_cdba4170e4e54d66a30816b736f6948d_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200},"excerpt":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Francesco Lavini, a 3rd year PhD…","readingMinutes":8,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Francesco Lavini, a 3rd year PhD student in the Physics Department at New York University (NYU)."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_cdba4170e4e54d66a30816b736f6948d_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us a little bit about where you are from."},{"type":"p","html":"I was born and raised in Rome, the capital city of Italy. I guess there's little I need to say about why it may be famous. You know, the Roman Empire, the Colosseum, the Vatican, countless churches and historical attractions, and so on. Not a big deal, really. I'm very proud of my origins and my city, as any other authentic Roman would point out."},{"type":"p","html":"Where did you complete your undergraduate and any graduate degrees prior to this one? (Tell me the name, where it was, what you studied.)"},{"type":"p","html":"I earned both my Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and my Master’s degree in Nanotechnology Engineering at La Sapienza, University of Rome, one of the largest university in Europe and one of the oldest in the entire world."},{"type":"p","html":"You spent some time at Oak Ridge National Labs, what was that like?"},{"type":"p","html":"$25b"},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_63231114bc3c40ddab1f088e3d14359e_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"How was your transition from Italy to NYC? (Easy, hard, fun, not much of a change, etc. and what made it that way?)"},{"type":"p","html":"During my time in Tennessee, I traveled quite often to NYC, developing time after time a deeper connection with the city. I realized I was falling deeply in love with its vibe, its landscapes, its people, and that I would have tried anything to live there. That is why, after I came back to Italy to graduate, and receiving an offer for a PhD position in NYC, it looked like my perfect life achievement. I know that NYC can be merciless sometimes, with its relentless pace and day-to-day challenges. I know that some of my peers struggled to adapt to such a complex and tough reality. But this is where I feel I belong in this stage of my life. New York still amazes me as much as the first day I came here, a long time ago now. It keeps me alive. Moving here was my everlasting declaration of love for NYC."},{"type":"p","html":"What group are you in and what is your particular research on?"},{"type":"p","html":"I work as an experimentalist in Prof. Elisa Riedo's lab (PicofroceLab). Our research mainly focuses on Nanolitography, Nanomechanics and on the characterization and manipulation of 2D Materials at the atomic scale. After a first project studying the frictional behavior of MoS2, a 2D solid lubricant, I'm currently exploring the mechanical properties of epitaxial graphene, by the use of high resolution nanoindentation and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) techniques. We are trying to understand and stabilize a particular transformation we experimentally observed on graphene, that brings this interesting material to an ultra-hard phase, stiffer than diamond. We call this new phase \"diamene\"."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_ff395d7f6f9f4306b03ddecdb78c3979_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What is your current status as a graduate student?"},{"type":"p","html":"I'm currently in my 3rd year of PhD program in Physics at the New York University (NYU), with focus on Nanotechnology and Material Science. My PI, her research lab and I recently moved here from the City University of New York (CUNY), where I first started my program working at the Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC). Lots of acronyms, I know."},{"type":"p","html":"What are some of the difficulties and/or good things about having your PI change universities?"},{"type":"p","html":"A job transfer is never a smooth affair. Each PhD program and each specific university has its own criteria and milestones. That's why, after two years at CUNY, the transfer to NYU may have extended the end of my PhD program. But I'm aware of how important this opportunity can be for me and my career, given the prestige and the incredible resources of NYU, and I am extremely excited to face any new challenges coming with this change. An example? Moving the entire lab from one facility to the other, and disassembling and reassembling all the machineries, even if complicated, was a perfect exercise to learn something new and get some insight on how these machines are built."},{"type":"p","html":"Can you tell me about some potential future applications for your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"My first project dealt with the study of 2D material frictional properties as a function of atomic thickness, which is relevant in applications such as composites, MEMS/NEMS and sensing, where the reduction of mechanical energy dissipation and structural thinness are desirable goals. The new, high-stiffness phase of graphene (diamene) instead could be potentially used to create ultra-light, ultra-hard coatings, for the most diverse applications, from devices, to vehicles and people. This novel property of graphene and the research on friction are just two examples of how important the fundamental study and characterization of mechanical properties of 2D materials is to open up unprecedented technological scenarios. In general, it is possible to raise the bar of devices' performances only through a knowledge of materials capabilities as accurate, reliable and exhaustive as possible."},{"type":"p","html":"How did you figure out you wanted to specialize in this area?"},{"type":"p","html":"The idea of committing to scientific research made its way in my life little by little, and each step of my early career pushed me further towards this direction. Since I was a kid, I've been always fascinated by futuristic prototypes and groundbreaking technologies, by the idea of pursuing pioneering discoveries. And I think that at present Nanotechnology and Material Science are at the very frontier of the scientific inquiry. There is so much to be understood and modeled on how our world works at the nanoscale, and there is always need for pushing materials performances over the edge. As an experimentalist, the feeling of discovering something never seen before is just priceless."},{"type":"p","html":"You spent some time as a Nanofabrication Facility Marketing Intern at the CUNY ASRC as part of the NYCEDC Futureworks program. Can you tell us about experience with Futureworks?"},{"type":"p","html":"$25c"},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_d3a160363ef3459a8fae7c6122c2cef1_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"You were also very active with the CUNY Materials Science Society (MRS) University Chapter while at CUNY. Can you tell us about what the MRS Chapter does and why you participate in it?"},{"type":"p","html":"I guess that this initiative, together with the Futureworks NYC experience, comes from my desire to get busy doing the more diverse activities. Together with some other CUNY fellows, as well as some of my best friends, we started the CUNY MRS University Organization, sponsored by an initiative of the Material Research Society (MRS), to serve as a connection between students involved in material research and the MRS national organization. Our group stimulates the meeting and communication among material researchers from all New York institutions, planning social gatherings, talks, seminars, site visits to lab and facilities, and other initiatives, encouraging people to share knowledge and interests. This particular experience and the people I worked with are one of the things I proudly bring along with me from my time at CUNY."},{"type":"p","html":"Where do you hope to take your career in the next 5 or 10 years?"},{"type":"p","html":"I like the idea of keeping my hands busy with research. The ideal continuation of my career after the PhD would be in the R&D department of some companies preferably investing in cutting-edge materials development and engineering. I can't and don't want to forget about my Engineering background. I'd also hope to work on facilitating the commercialization of innovative discovers, closing the gap between lab research and the market."},{"type":"p","html":"What do you do for fun outside of your program?"},{"type":"p","html":"I am a real keen traveler, eager reader, untiring stroller, music addicted, The Office expert, professional Sunday bruncher. I love to explore the city, craving for new experiences. There are so many things to do and see in NYC, one lifetime is not enough, and my bucket list keeps getting longer every week. I have apps on my phone to record restaurants and bars I need to try, others to keep me updated about the latest events, and necessarily others reminding me of my checking account balance."},{"type":"p","html":"If you could go back to the first day you started your graduate work and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?"},{"type":"p","html":"It would probably be something like: no matter how hard life can be, keep believing in yourself, in what you can do and in what you proved so far. If you don't do it in the first place, nobody else will. I wouldn't probably warn myself about any particular mistake I made. They are an indispensable part of the personal growth. Also, I really, really don't like spoilers, so…."},{"type":"p","html":"Twitter: https://twitter.com/laviniolavini"},{"type":"p","html":"LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/francesco-lavini-2b1985148/"},{"type":"li","html":"Research Highlight"}]},{"slug":"meet-zhoreh-jalilvand-chemical-engineering-phd-student","oldPath":"/post/meet-zhoreh-jalilvand-chemical-engineering-phd-student","title":"Meet Zohreh Jalilvand: Chemical Engineering PhD Student","date":"2018-12-02","author":null,"category":"Community Spotlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_19f62ef06934417ebaff6139082f1db3.jpg","width":1283,"height":855},"excerpt":"Updated: Dec 3, 2018","readingMinutes":4,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Updated: Dec 3, 2018"},{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Zohreh Jalilvand, a 5th year PhD student in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the City College of New York."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_19f62ef06934417ebaff6139082f1db3.jpg","width":1283,"height":855,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Where did you complete your undergraduate and graduate degrees prior to this one?"},{"type":"p","html":"I have completed both my Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in chemical engineering at Amirkabir University (Tehran Polytechnic) in Tehran, Iran."},{"type":"p","html":"How was your transition from Tehran to NYC?"},{"type":"p","html":"As an Iranian student, I was aware that I was going to face many challenges in pursuing a Ph.D. in the United States. One of the most challenging things is knowing that due to visa restrictions, I cannot go back home to visit my family for at least five to six years. Moving to the US was however an avenue to success, providing me with several opportunities to learn and grow in the field of chemical engineering by attending a great Ph.D. program, as well as learning about new cultures with amazing people around me."},{"type":"p","html":"What is your current status as a graduate student?"},{"type":"p","html":"I was accepted to the Chemical Engineering PhD program at the City College of New York (CCNY) in 2014 and I started my research under the supervision of Professor Ilona Kretzschmar in 2015. Currently I am in the 5th year of my PhD program and I anticipate graduating in a year (2019)."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_ef640b4c8a81459283d0e7bd9ebac618_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What group are you in and what is your particular research on?"},{"type":"p","html":"Under the supervision of Professor Kretzschmar, my research focuses on the experimental studies and the simulation of the motion of active colloids. It involves the fabrication and surface modification of so called Janus and patchy particles, which are micron sized spherical particles with different surface properties. We study these systems experimentally and through theoretical analysis. For the theoretical part of my research we collaborate with Professor Joel Koplik from the Physics department and the Benjamin Levich Institute for Physico-Chemical Hydrodynamics, CCNY."},{"type":"p","html":"What are some of the types of experiments or experimental equipment that you utilize in investigating or fabricating your nano-particles?"},{"type":"p","html":"In order to fabricate Janus or patchy particles, spherical polystyrene particles are assembled into close-packed monolayers on a glass slide using a syringe pump or spin coater. Subsequently, physical vapor deposition (PVD) or E-beam evaporator are used to coat the particles with platinum. The thickness of the platinum cap on particles is in the order of 10 nm. After deposition, patchy particles are dispersed in deionized water by sonication."},{"type":"p","html":"For experiments, the dispersion of patchy particles is mixed with an aqueous hydrogen peroxide solution, which results in patchy particle swimmers. The patchy swimmer motion is observed using a microscope. The trajectories of patchy swimmers are recorded for 60 seconds at a rate of 10 frames per second. Finally, the motion of the patchy swimmers is analyzed using a modified MATLAB program to investigate the motion of these particles and the results used to characterize the swimming mechanism."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_70c04332582143c6908473dafc0de2c9_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Can you tell us about potential future applications for your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"Potential applications may explore various ways to address particular health challenges, including targeted drug delivery, cancer fighting-agent delivery, lab-on-chip particle transport, as well as environmental applications."},{"type":"p","html":"How did you figure out you wanted to specialize in this area?"},{"type":"p","html":"I figured studying the motion of micron size particles, which lies in the field of colloidal science and has a broad range of applications, would provide me with several opportunities to gain expertise in experimental techniques and equipment, as well as theoretical tools. Motivated by that, I chose to do my research in this area, with an aim to broaden my skills in colloidal science."},{"type":"p","html":"How do you explain what you study to friends or family members that don’t know anything about nanotechnology?"},{"type":"p","html":"I would start with the scale of the experiments that I deal with and give them a sense of that, followed by the application of my research. Then, I would try to give them a big picture of what my research looks like by connecting my studies to the far-reaching application."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_458c30524eda4439a66b1a62f4e4b12e_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Where do you hope to take your career in the next 5 or 10 years?"},{"type":"p","html":"I am very interested in colloidal science research as well as learning more about other related fields and possibly exploring them in more detail. I am hoping to join a research and development team at a company where I can utilize my skill set and knowledge efficiently to move the company’s objectives forward. I believe that this particular environment would provide me the opportunity for continuous learning and a path for career advancement. I hope to keep myself dynamic and visionary throughout the challenges that I may face."},{"type":"p","html":"What do you do for fun outside of your program?"},{"type":"p","html":"During my spare time, I enjoy running, doing yoga, exercising in general and playing Ping-Pong. I like to cook and hang out with friends. Also, I enjoy watching movies, reading books and painting."},{"type":"p","html":"Favorite movies or books?"},{"type":"p","html":"A couple of my favorite movies are Leon: the professional, 1900, Mad Max, Midnight in Paris, Separation and my favorite series is Game of Thrones. I enjoyed reading Man's Search for Meaning, Gone With The Wind, Harry Potter, The Alchemist, The Lies We Tell Ourselves and a couple Persian books such as Missing Soluch, Her Eyes, Fall is the last season..."},{"type":"p","html":"If you could go back to the first day you started your graduate work and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?"},{"type":"p","html":"I think I have tried to do my best so far, but I would always say: Stay strong, be patient and focused and enjoy every single moment of your life."},{"type":"p","html":"LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zohreh-jalilvand-711416169/"},{"type":"li","html":"Research Highlight"}]},{"slug":"meet-jeffrey-elloian-electrical-engineering-phd-student","oldPath":"/post/meet-jeffrey-elloian-electrical-engineering-phd-student","title":"Meet Jeffrey Elloian: Electrical Engineering PhD Student","date":"2018-11-15","author":null,"category":"Community Spotlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_ca8cfe149e014b91a33301f6adcfc12c_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200},"excerpt":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Jeffrey Elloian, a 4th year PhD…","readingMinutes":3,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene. Today we sit down with Jeffrey Elloian, a 4th year PhD student in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_ca8cfe149e014b91a33301f6adcfc12c_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us a little bit about where you are from."},{"type":"p","html":"I am from a suburb of Worcester, Massachusetts. It is a quiet New England town right outside of a small city."},{"type":"p","html":"Where did you complete your undergraduate and any graduate degrees prior to this one?"},{"type":"p","html":"I completed both my Bachelors of Science and Masters of Science in Electrical and Computer engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, located in Worcester, Massachusetts."},{"type":"p","html":"Where are you in your graduate program?"},{"type":"p","html":"I am currently in my 4th year of my Ph. D. Program at Columbia University and I hope to graduate within the next 2 years."},{"type":"p","html":"What group are you in and what is your particular research on?"},{"type":"p","html":"I am in Prof. Kenneth Shepard’s Bioelectronic Systems group. Our lab works on a variety of biomedical applications for integrated circuits and electronic devices. Specifically, I am developing a type of flexible ultrasound phased array. (https://www.bioee.ee.columbia.edu/). Although my original background was in antenna theory, much of my current work involves using microfabrication techniques to create these arrays. Due to the temperature limitations of the sensitive piezoelectric materials, I need to find creative ways to adapt traditional methods in my processes."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_8d38686cb7fc4f7596d513fd56295526_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Can you tell me about some potential future applications for your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"A flexible ultrasound array would allow more comfortable scanning for diagnostic imaging. The human body does not have rigid, flat surfaces, and each person has a different body shape. A flexible transducer allows one to use a single probe to adapt to different contours. Moreover, it enables long term monitoring with patch applications. The fabrication techniques that I am working on will allow others to use piezoelectrics materials that are currently prohibitively difficult to work with."},{"type":"p","html":"How did you figure out you wanted to specialize in this area?"},{"type":"p","html":"My previous background was in antenna theory, which lent itself to an understanding of acoustics and phased arrays. I enjoyed building practical devices and test setups, but coming to Columbia gave me my first experience in a cleanroom."},{"type":"p","html":"What does your lab work look like?"},{"type":"p","html":"I split my time between fabricating devices in the cleanroom and lab work with our laser system and testing equipment."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_1912a69169a04dd2bfd2f29101c8de0e_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Where do you hope to take your career in the next 5 or 10 years?"},{"type":"p","html":"I hope to do research at a FFRDC after I graduate; however I would also like to go teach. Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC) are nonprofit entities sponsored and funded by the U.S. government to meet some special long-term research or development need which cannot be met as effectively by existing in-house or contractor resources."},{"type":"p","html":"Why FFRDC?"},{"type":"p","html":"I previously spent time at MIT Lincoln Lab and MITRE Corporation and was really fascinated with the technologies they were developing. I also really enjoy the rich history these companies have in working with the US government."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_9f0adbd78dea4a4da1aef140c1513f9e_d_4898_3265_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"What do you do outside of the lab for fun?"},{"type":"p","html":"Outside the lab, I am a martial artist and an avid video gamer."},{"type":"p","html":"What kind of martial arts and favorite gaming platform?"},{"type":"p","html":"I’m not currently training, but I was a 2nd degree black belt in Shaolin Kenpo Karate and love teaching it. Definitely a PC gamer and mostly into RPGs."},{"type":"p","html":"If you could go back to the first day you started your graduate work and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?"},{"type":"p","html":"I would definitely have told me myself to get trained in the machine shop. At first this didn’t seem to be something I would use very frequently, but testing apparatuses often need machined parts. I am fortunate to have coworkers that help me, but it would have been a useful skill to have."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_2e051ac9600249ab92f0e924c3e5a97a_d_4898_3265_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"li","html":"Research Highlight"}]},{"slug":"meet-yoko-bian-chemistry-phd-student","oldPath":"/post/meet-yoko-bian-chemistry-phd-student","title":"Meet Yoko Bian: Chemistry PhD Student","date":"2018-11-04","author":null,"category":"Community Spotlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_fe38b6bdc8604919a6fffddd05735f44.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000},"excerpt":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene and to highlight some of the amazing work being done in our…","readingMinutes":8,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Nanotech NYC sits down with students, faculty and researchers from across the city to give those interested a glimpse into the local nanotechnology scene and to highlight some of the amazing work being done in our own neighborhoods. Today we sit down with Yoko Bian, a 3rd year Chemistry PhD student in the Nanotechnology and Material Science Program at Graduate Center of CUNY."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_fe38b6bdc8604919a6fffddd05735f44.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Tell us a little bit about where you are from."},{"type":"p","html":"I am from Shijiazhuang, a prefecture-level city 165 miles southwest of Beijing. A lot of times when I am asked the similar type of questions, I’d simplify it as Beijing because it would look quite embarrassing to not know what my hometown - Shijiazhuang - is famous for. So I looked it up - Shijiazhuang is the largest pharmaceutical base in China and is as well an important center in the textile, IT, manufacturing and chemical industries. I guess it makes sense now why I become a chemist."},{"type":"p","html":"Where did you complete your undergraduate?"},{"type":"p","html":"I went to Centre College, a wonderful private liberal arts college located in Danville, Kentucky. I majored in Chemistry and Finance and had a typical college life there."},{"type":"p","html":"What group are you in and what is your particular research on?"},{"type":"p","html":"I am in a Computational and Theoretical Chemistry group, working with Prof. Gustavo Lopez at Lehman College. The current project I am working on is related to the swelling thermodynamics ultra-thin polymeric film in quantum fluids. We hypothesize that the thermodynamically stably constructed ultra-thin polymeric system could be swollen by quantum fluids due to the nuclear quantum effects – the nature of quantum fluids. In my research, molecular computer simulations techniques will be designed and implemented to characterize molecular details of the swelling of such phase systems."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_9bb144c85ebb459683383d1bf5206500_d_4608_3072_s_4_2.jpg","width":1800,"height":1200,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Can you tell us about some potential future applications of your work?"},{"type":"p","html":"When it comes to drug delivery, the controlled release of active chemicals can be achieved experimentally through various mechanisms upon the occurrence of a trigger as a response to environmental conditions, e.g. the diffusion and swelling of the permeant. However, detailed microscopic mechanisms for the swelling of fluid-polymer phase systems are still not well understood. My research project can be used to assist in understanding experimental data and explore reaction mechanisms not readily studied via experiments. In particular, it helps to envision incorporation of quantum fluids and ultra-thin polymeric films in developing fluid – polymer phase system for drug delivery and microelectronics fabrication in real world."},{"type":"p","html":"How did you come to realize you wanted to specialize in this particular area?"},{"type":"p","html":"At the time when I moved to the city for my PhD, artificial intelligence (AI) was growing quickly in the technology and financial sectors, but hadn’t quite made its leap to the physical sciences, even though there have been discussions on deep learning’s role in the hard sciences, specifically, AI and the future of computational chemistry. I would love to be part of this growing community of researchers."},{"type":"p","html":"What’s more important, I had amazing quantum chemistry professors during both of my undergrad and PhD studies, which is (almost always) in the scope of computational chemistry. The former is the actual theory that helps with understanding molecules at the subatomic level, whereas the latter helps with making predictions through simulation and modeling, although these applications don’t have to be quantum mechanical in nature."},{"type":"p","html":"Because of the fact that I was also an Econ major in college, I remember taking econometrics and quantum chemistry the same semester, and I became fascinated at econometric models and wondered how things are like in the hard sciences like chemistry. I later learned the game of computational chemistry is similar in that sense - build the model, code it, run the program, compare with reality, repeat. A predictive model means a fundamental understanding of the process is obtained and thus can be used to make predictions for processes that are hard to study by experiment. Besides, it is a lot less expensive to do chemistry in silico than in vitro or in vivo."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_f73096e4416d4fcd8d246acdc1f3d3bf.jpg","width":1294,"height":863,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Where do you hope to take your career in the next 5 or 10 years?"},{"type":"p","html":"Since the fields of research and intellectual property are so intertwined, I am hoping to work as a patent practitioner after my PhD lab, as I would like to see myself still on the cutting edge of R&D. As a patent practitioner, I believe I will constantly be exposed to new and exciting discoveries virtually before anyone else."},{"type":"p","html":"Based on your twitter feed (@YokoJBian), you seem to stay up to date on the Intellectual Property scene both in the US and China. What interests you and this? What are the major differences between IP in the US and IP in China?"},{"type":"p","html":"My interest in the law goes back to the many debates I participated when I was a kid. For many years, ever since I moved to the U.S. from China, I forgot those childhood debates until one day the fires of that early passion were rekindled by the Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International case when I was a sophomore in college. The Alice decision met a mixed reception regarding patent eligibility, but it has profoundly affected U.S. patent law. I became interested in questioning whether these so-called software and business-methods are eligible to be granted patents and what is better for the society."},{"type":"p","html":"$25d"},{"type":"p","html":"IP strategy is the cornerstone of overall business strategy. Companies in general either use patents defensively as an IP shield or aggressively as an IP sword."},{"type":"p","html":"$25e"},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_beb1263c7dc943fc872cc95e51553d1a.jpg","width":1423,"height":949,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"You also stay active on social media promoting Women in STEM, specifically with NYC 500 WomenSci (Twitter: @500wsNYC). Tell us about those efforts."},{"type":"p","html":"Thanks to the focus on women in STEM from the media, we all know that women lag sadly behind men in STEM fields, and the issue is more serious than just a parity of numbers. Employers, schools and various institutions shouldn’t just be trying to ramp up their numbers of women so that they can claim equity and sit back with a smile. We care because the lack of women in STEM means we are lacking the perspectives of more or less half the world's population."},{"type":"p","html":"$25f"},{"type":"p","html":"If you could go back to the first day you started your graduate work and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?"},{"type":"p","html":"It is okay to be older, and a student. Also, hangovers will hurt like hell when you get older. Just kidding. “Hard work isn’t the same as peak performance.”"},{"type":"p","html":"Yoko's LinkedIn profile can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yokojbian/"},{"type":"li","html":"Research Highlight"}]},{"slug":"polymer-coating-cools-down-buildings","oldPath":"/post/polymer-coating-cools-down-buildings","title":"Polymer Coating Cools Down Buildings","date":"2018-10-01","author":null,"category":"Research Highlight","cover":{"src":"/assets/images/08758d_2dd43601ec584eaa93a3887ae0785f4d.jpg","width":480,"height":480},"excerpt":"Columbia Engineers make white paint whiter -- and cooler -- by removing white pigment and invent a polymer coating, with nano-to-microscale air voids, that acts as a spontaneous air cooler and can be fabricated,…","readingMinutes":6,"body":[{"type":"p","html":"Columbia Engineers make white paint whiter -- and cooler -- by removing white pigment and invent a polymer coating, with nano-to-microscale air voids, that acts as a spontaneous air cooler and can be fabricated, dyed, and applied like paint."},{"type":"p","html":"COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE."},{"type":"p","html":"BY HOLLY EVARTS | IMAGE CREDIT: JYOTIRMOY MANDAL/COLUMBIA ENGINEERING | MODIFIED WITH PERMISSION BY JACOB TREVINO"},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_bd26741732784f66bf2e1c58af9ed916.jpg","width":816,"height":460,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"New York, NY--September 27, 2018--With temperatures rising and heat-waves disrupting lives around the world, cooling solutions are becoming ever more essential. This is a critical issue especially in developing countries, where summer heat can be extreme and is projected to intensify. But common cooling methods such as air conditioners are expensive, consume significant amounts of energy, require ready access to electricity, and often require coolants that deplete ozone or have a strong greenhouse effect."},{"type":"p","html":"An alternative to these energy-intensive cooling methods is passive daytime radiative cooling (PDRC), a phenomenon where a surface spontaneously cools by reflecting sunlight and radiating heat to the colder atmosphere. PDRC is most effective if a surface has a high solar reflectance (R) that minimizes solar heat gain, and a high, thermal emittance that maximizes radiative heat loss to the sky. If R and emittance are sufficiently high, a net heat loss can occur, even under sunlight."},{"type":"image","src":"/assets/images/08758d_e7761879ef634f38a13e10164a39bf6c.jpg","width":816,"height":460,"alt":""},{"type":"p","html":"Developing practical PDRC designs has been challenging: many recent design proposals are complex or costly, and cannot be widely implemented or applied on rooftops and buildings, which have different shapes and textures. Up to now, white paints, which are inexpensive and easy to apply, have been the benchmark for PDRC. White paints, however, usually have pigments that absorb UV light, and do not reflect longer solar wavelengths very well, so their performance is only modest at best."},{"type":"p","html":"Researchers at Columbia Engineering have invented a high-performance exterior PDRC polymer coating with nano-to-microscale air voids that acts as a spontaneous air cooler and can be fabricated, dyed, and applied like paint on rooftops, buildings, water tanks, vehicles, even spacecraft--anything that can be painted. They used a solution-based phase-inversion technique that gives the polymer a porous foam-like structure. The air voids in the porous polymer scatter and reflect sunlight, due to the difference in the refractive index between the air voids and the surrounding polymer. The polymer turns white and thus avoids solar heating, while its intrinsic emittance causes it to efficiently lose heat to the sky. The study is published online in Science this month."},{"type":"p","html":"VIDEO: https://youtu.be/8lTdZ-U0Qm8"},{"type":"p","html":"The team--Yuan Yang, assistant professor of materials science and engineering; Nanfang Yu, associate professor of applied physics; and Jyotirmoy Mandal, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in Yang's group (all department of applied physics and applied mathematics)--built upon earlier work that demonstrated that simple plastics and polymers, including acrylic, silicone, and PET, are excellent heat radiators and could be used for PDRC. The challenges were how to get these normally transparent polymers to reflect sunlight without using silver mirrors as reflectors and how to make them easily deployable."},{"type":"p","html":"They decided to use phase-inversion because it is a simple, solution-based method for making light-scattering air-voids in polymers. Polymers and solvents are already used in paints, and the Columbia Engineering method essentially replaces the pigments in white paint with air voids that reflect all wavelengths of sunlight, from UV to infrared."},{"type":"p","html":"\"This simple but fundamental modification yields exceptional R and emittance that equal or surpass those of state-of-the-art PDRC designs, but with a convenience that is almost paint-like,\" says Mandal."},{"type":"p","html":"The researchers found their polymer coating's high solar reflectance (R > 96%) and high thermal emittance (~ 97%) kept it significantly cooler than its environment under widely different skies, e.g. by 6°C in the warm, arid desert in Arizona and 3°C in the foggy, tropical environment of Bangladesh. \"The fact that cooling is achieved in both desert and tropical climates, without any thermal protection or shielding, demonstrates the utility of our design wherever cooling is required,\" Yang notes."},{"type":"p","html":"The team also created colored polymer coatings with cooling capabilities by adding dyes. \"Achieving a superior balance between color and cooling performance over current paints is one of the most important aspects of our work,\" Yu notes. \"For exterior coatings, the choice of color is often subjective, and paint manufacturers have been trying to make colored coatings, like those for roofs, for decades.\""},{"type":"p","html":"The group took environmental and operational issues, such as recyclability, bio-compatibility, and high-temperature operability, into consideration, and showed that their technique can be generalized to a range of polymers to achieve these functionalities. \"Polymers are an amazingly diverse class of materials, and because this technique is generic, additional desirable properties can be conveniently integrated into our PDRC coatings, if suitable polymers are available,\" Mandal adds."},{"type":"p","html":"\"Nature offers many ways for heating and cooling, some of which are extremely well known and widely studied and others that are poorly known. Radiative cooling--by using the sky as a heat sink--belongs to the latter group, and its potential has been strangely overlooked by materials scientists until a few years ago,\" says Uppsala University Physics Professor Claes-Göran Granqvist, a pioneer in the field of radiative cooling, who was not involved with the study. \"The publication by Mandal et al. highlights the importance of radiative cooling and represents an important breakthrough by demonstrating that hierarchically porous polymer coatings, which can be prepared cheaply and conveniently, give excellent cooling even in full sunlight.\""},{"type":"p","html":"Yang, Yu, and Mandal are refining their design in terms of applicability, while exploring possibilities such as the use of completely biocompatible polymers and solvents. They are in talks with industry about next steps."},{"type":"p","html":"\"Now is a critical time to develop promising solutions for sustainable humanity,\" Yang notes, \"This year, we witnessed heat waves and record-breaking temperatures in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. It is essential that we find solutions to this climate challenge, and we are very excited to be working on this new technology that addresses it.\""},{"type":"p","html":"Yu adds that he used to think that white was the most unattainable color: \"When I studied watercolor painting years ago, white paints were the most expensive. Cremnitz white or lead white was the choice of great masters, including Rembrandt and Lucian Freud. We have now demonstrated that white is in fact the most achievable color. It can be made using nothing more than properly sized air voids embedded in a transparent medium. Air voids are what make snow white and Saharan silver ants silvery.\""},{"type":"p","html":"ABOUT THE STUDY"},{"type":"p","html":"The study is titled \"Hierarchically Porous Polymer Coatings for Highly Efficient Passive Daytime Radiative Cooling.\""},{"type":"p","html":"Authors are: J. Mandal1 , Y. Fu1 , A. Overvig1 , M. Jia2 , K. Sun1 , N. Shi1 , H. Zhou3 , X. Xiao3 , N. Yu1, Y. Yang1"},{"type":"p","html":"Affiliations: 1 Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia Engineering. 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia Engineering. 3 Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemony, IL 60439, USA"},{"type":"p","html":"The study was supported by startup funding from Columbia University, the NSF MRSEC program through Columbia University's Center for Precision Assembly of Superstratic and Superatomic Solids (Y.Y. DMR-1420634), AFOSR MURI (Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative) program (N.Y. grant # FA9550-14-1-0389), AFOSR DURIP (Defense University Research Instrumentation Program) (N.Y. grant # FA9550-16-1-0322), and the National Science Foundation (N.Y. grant # ECCS-1307948). A.C.O. acknowledges support from the NSF IGERT program (# DGE-1069240). We acknowledge support from the Advanced Photon Source in Argonne National Laboratory (under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357) and .Brookhaven National Laboratory (under Contract No. DE-AC02-98CH10886.)"},{"type":"p","html":"The authors have no competing interests. The authors have filed a provisional patent application with Columbia Technology Ventures for this study."},{"type":"h","level":4,"text":"MEDIA CONTACT"},{"type":"p","html":"Holly Evarts, Director of Strategic Communications and Media Relations 212-854-3206 (o), 347-453-7408 (c), holly.evarts@columbia.edu"},{"type":"p","html":"#nanotechnology #greentech #photonics #energyefficient"}]}]}]}]}]