Announcements

Giannis Mpourmpakis received a $110,000 grant from the American Chemical Society (ACS) for computer modeling research to investigate the conversion of ethane, propane, butane and other alkanes used in the petrochemical industry.

The study, “Identifying Structure-Activity Relationships for the Dehydrogenation of Alkanes on Oxides,” will look to gain a fundamental understanding of the dehydrogenation of small hydrocarbons to olefins on metal oxides under experimental conditions.

The Non-Volatile Memory Technology Symposium will be hosted at Carnegie Mellon University, October 17-19, 2016.

Vincent Sokalski will act as chair for this year's conference, along with Professor Lu-Ping Shi of Tsinghua University.

The NVMTS is an eminent forum for exchanging information on state-of-the-art technological advances on non-volatile memory among researchers and engineers from both academia and industry. NVMTS 2016 focuses on both emerging and existing non-volatile memory technologies instead of a singular technology, so as to encourage cross-pollination of ideas. They aim to create an interactive environment for discussing various significant aspects of advanced memory technologies.

Jeremy Berg, Associate Senior Vice Chancellor for Science Strategy and Planning in the Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh and former director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), has been named by the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to serve as editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals, beginning 1 July 2016.

Berg, who also holds positions as Pittsburgh Foundation Professor and Director of the Institute for Personalized Medicine, Professor of Computational and Systems Biology, and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh, will become the 20th editor-in-chief of Science since the journal’s inception in 1880.

Paul W. Leu is the recipient of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers' (IISE) UPS Award for Minority Advancement in Industrial Engineering.

The UPS award recognizes individuals who, through innovative means, have developed programs or projects directed to the advancement of women, minorities or the disabled in the field of industrial engineering. Since joining the University of Pittsburgh in 2010, Paul Leu has worked successfully with the Pitt Engineering Office of Diversity supervising INVESTING NOW engineering workshops every summer. INVESTING NOW is a college preparatory program created to stimulate, support, and recognize the academic performance of pre-college students from groups that are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Leu and his research group have managed INVESTING NOW workshops for over ten weeks and with more than 200 high school juniors and seniors for the last six years.

Sussan Fullerton received a $496,272 grant from the National Science Foundation to study two-dimensional semiconductors with the goal of demonstrating a switch that requires less power than conventional silicon-based transistors. 

“As electronic devices continue to become more integrated into our daily lives, more energy is required to power these devices,” said Susan Fullerton, the principle investigator of the study. “On a large scale, decreasing the power requirements of electronics would impact global energy consumption.”

Susan Fullerton was awarded a 2016 Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU). 

“This is an outstanding accomplishment for a young faculty member, and so we are very proud of Susan’s award,” noted Steven Little, PhD, the William Kepler Whiteford Professor and Department Chair of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering. “The Powe Award is very competitive, and it speaks highly of Susan to receive this during her first year at Pitt.”

The 60th international conference on Electron, Ion, and Photon Beam technology and Nanofabrication (EIPBN) conference is dedicated to lithographic patterning science, nanomanufacturing process technology, and the applications these methods enable. For 57 years, and 60 meetings the conference has brought together engineers and scientists from industries and universities from all over the world to report on and discuss recent progress and future trends.

EIPBN Registration: Online registration for EIPBN 2016 is now available. Click here to register. 
Early registration and special student rates are available. The early registration deadline is April 30, 2016.

Read more on our events page.

The external advisory committee of the University of Pittsburgh’s Mascaro Center for Sustainable Innovation (MCSI) has awarded four faculty members with research seed grants totaling $190,630 for the 2016/2017 year.

This year’s recipients include PQI faculty William Stanchina for his proposal on "β- Ga2O3 Nanoelectronics: A Path to a Sustainable Semiconductor Technology for High Efficiency Electricity Conversion from Renewables."

The American Physical Society (APS) has named PQI faculty David Snoke one of the 146 Outstanding Referees of 2016 for exceptional help in assessing manuscripts for publication in the Physical Review journals.

Like Fellowship in the APS and other organizations, this is a lifetime award, and the Outstanding Referees are to be congratulated and thanked for their outstanding service to the physics community.

PQI faculty Sergey Frolov and Di Xiao were among the 24 Cottrell Scholars for 2016. The announcement was made last week by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA), and the designation comes with a $100,000 award for each recipient for research and teaching.