In the news

Qi Li has received the Bright Futures Student Award from the International Precious Metals Institute for his work on gold nanoparticles. The $5,000 prize sponsored by the Gero Family Trust will be presented this month at the institute's annual conference in Texas.

Li, who works in the lab of Rongchao Jin, also has researched different models of "doping" gold nanoparticles, a process where a small amount of another metal is added to the nanoparticle.

Congratulations!
 

Congratulations to the 2018/2019 PQI Graduate Student Research Award Winners!

Ms. Azarin Zarassi  (Frolov Lab, Physics), Ms. Arailym Kairalapova (Jordan Group, Chemistry), Ms. Shreya Ghosh (SaxenaGroup, Chemistry), Mr. Shouvik Mukherjee (Snoke Group, Physics), Mr. Chenxu Liu (Pekker and Dutt Lab, Physics), and Mr. Minh Nguyen Vo (Johnson Group, Chemical Engineering) each won one term of graduate funding for the year 2018/2019.
 

Mukund Bapna received the 2018 Guy C. Berry Graduate Student Research Award. He was presented with the prize at the Mellon College of Science Graduate Student Town Hall in April.

He was working under the supervision of Sara Majetich on magnetic tunnel junction nanopillars, nanostructures. 

Bapna received his Ph.D. in May and is now heading off to Portland, Oregon, to work for the research and development team at Intel.

There he will be developing smart interconnects for nodes under 20 nanometers in size for next-generation processors.

The Kavli Foundation Emerging Leader in Chemistry Lecture is awarded to an outstanding chemical scientist who is highly regarded by her or his peers for significant contributions to an area of chemistry or related multidisciplinary area of chemistry. 

Jill Millstone has been selected as the Kavli Emerging Leader Speaker for 2019. Her seminar will be on Monday, August 20 at the Boston ACS Meeting.

Congratulations!

PQI faculty Geoffrey Hutchison, Sangyeop Lee, and David Pekker represented PQI on Intel ISEF 2018 Public Day.

Intel ISEF Public Day is an outreach program where middle and high school students from Pennsylvania (grades 6-12) participates in a hands-on, interactive day celebrating science.

Geoffery Hutchison had a booth at this event where he showed how to visualize chemistry by using computational methods via smartphone technology.

Sangyeop Lee presented the concept of waste heat recovery in a workshop.

David Pekker gave a lecture on quantum computers. 

The College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University has named this year’s faculty award winners, selected by the College of Engineering Faculty Awards Committee. 

Venkat Viswanathan received George Tallman Ladd Research Award. 

This award is given to a faculty member within the College of Engineering in recognition of outstanding research and professional accomplishments and potential.

Lilian Chong, the founder of Pitt’s Creative Science Writing Program, is leading a program on science and creativity along with Pitt English Instructor and award-winning poet, Sam Pittman.

In this program, they bring students from Chemistry and English together.

While she was demonstrating a simulation of molecules students work on poems describing molecular level emotions. 

Bradley Slezak was a graduate student under the supervision of Wolfgang J. Choyke and Brian D'Urso.

This spring he has successfully passed his Ph.D. defense. On Thursday, April 26, 2018 he attended the commencement ceremony at the John M. and Gertrude E. Petersen Events Center to receive his degree.

His research involved measuring the decoherence rate of non-classical states of the trapped particle.

Congratulations Dr. Bradley Slezak !
 

Walter Klahold was a graduate student under the supervision of Wolfgang J. Choyke and Robert P. Devaty 

This spring he has successfully passed his Ph.D. defense. On Thursday, April 26, 2018, he attended the commencement ceremony  at the John M. and Gertrude E. Petersen Events Center to receive his degree.

His research involved energy level structure of free excitons in 4H SiC from wavelength modulated absorption spectroscopy and low-temperature photoluminescence.

Congratulations Dr. Walter Klahold !

B. Reeja Jayan was recognized as an innovator in 3D printing by Engineering.com for her work in creating more efficient ceramic 3D printing techniques. The article, which highlighted Jayan’s recent receipt of a $500,000 NSF CAREER Award, focused on her research in using electromagnetic waves to manipulate ceramic structures. Her method could provide major energy savings in comparison to traditional heat firing, enabling the 3D printing of industrial-grade ceramics and greatly expanding their range of practical applications.