Highlighted on Science Magazine! Mason Awardee Susan Fullerton Display Benefits of Outsider Perspectives
Susan Fullerton, an assistant professor of chemical and petroleum engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, is one of five winners presented with the 2019 AAAS Marion Milligan Mason Awards for Women in the Chemical Sciences at a 13 December awards ceremony at the American Association for the Advancement of Science headquarters.
She and her team had created a new ion conductor with a particularly unique property: once the transistor was turned on it stayed on, and once it was turned off it stayed off in the absence of a power supply. This enables memory sticks to store information even when they are disconnected from a computer. Fullerton envisions a future where this type of switching could lead to a memory stick that operates on much lower power than those on the market today and to devices with never-before-seen properties, such as one that can be triggered to permanently destroy its data if it falls into the wrong hands.
Nathaniel Rosi is included on the list of the Clarivate Analytics website that “recognizes world-class researchers selected for their exceptional research performance, demonstrated by production of multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year in Web of Science”. This is the third consecutive year that Dr. Rosi has been included on this list. The Highly Cited Researchers list from Clarivate Analytics identifies scientists and social scientists who have demonstrated significant influence through publication of multiple highly cited papers during the last decade.
Marking her ability to inspire students through novel demonstrations of complex subjects as well as her mentoring of women and underrepresented minorities, PQI member 
Roger Mong and Jacob Tevis were recognized by the National Science Foundation CAREER award. Roger Mong aims to develop and study a wide collection of quantum phenomena that may be used in the next step of the quantum revolution. The goal of his project is to study how quantum behavior can survive beyond the microscopic regime. Roger Mong and his team will look for ways in which fundamental particles, such as electrons, can be bound together similarly to how atoms form molecules. Tevis Jacobs’ research seeks to enable the rational design of new and better stabilizing support materials by elucidating the dependence of particle coarsening on the supporting surface structure. His investigation will develop new approaches to measure the attachment and stability of nanoparticles on well-defined surfaces under various conditions, enabling the rational engineering of surfaces to optimize the performance and lifetime of the nanoparticles. 
Jennifer Lasser and Susan Fullerton were recognized by the National Science Foundation CAREER award. Jennifer Laaser's research will investigate how the structure and dynamics of polymeric networks influence force-driven processes at the molecular scale, and will develop curricular materials and outreach activities aimed at promoting education and diversity in polymer science. Susan Fullerton’s research investigation aims to continue shrinking the size and power consumption of electronics with new materials and new engineering approaches. She approaches this challenge by development of super-thin “all 2D” materials, whic are similar to a sheet of paper – if the paper were only a single molecule thick. 
American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) has appointed Jeremy Levy as member of its 2018 lifetime fellowship cohort. AAAS will recognize the award during its annual meeting on February 16, 2019. 
Venkat Viswanathan and his collaborator, MIT materials science professor Yet-Ming Chiang, are developing a new battery specifically designed for an advanced hybrid plane. Their work was recently featured in an article in Swarajya magazine and in MIT Technology Review. Rather than focusing their efforts on developing improved materials, the pair are working with magnetic forces to facilitate the improved movement of lithium ions within their batteries, accelerating electrical discharge. Their ultimate goal is to create a 12-seat plane that can fly more than 600 kilometers on a full charge.
Bedewy and colleagues discovered that silk combined with carbon nanotubes may lead to a new generation of biomedical devices and so-called transient, biodegradable electronics. They used microwave irradiation coupled with a solvent vapor treatment to provide a unique control mechanism for the protein structure and resulted in a flexible and transparent film comparable to synthetic polymers but one that could be both more sustainable and degradable. These regenerated silk fibroins and carbon nanotube films have potential for use in flexible electronics, biomedical devices and transient electronics such as sensors that would be used for a desired period inside the body ranging from hours to weeks, and then naturally dissolve.