PEOPLE & PLACES UPDATE

Elementary award

Sherlock Holmes has been

awarded an Extraordinary

Honorary Fellowship from the UK

Royal Society of Chemistry.

According to the society,

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation

was “the first detective to exploit

chemical science as a means of

detection.” A modern Dr John

Watson, a Fellow of the Society,

was present at the ceremony in

Baker Street.

For your information

Neal Bertram of the University of

California, San Diego has won the

2003 IEEE Reynold B. Johnson

Information Storage Award. He is

cited for “fundamental and

pioneering contributions to

magnetic recording physics

research.” His work focuses on

modeling the instability that

occurs as more information bits

are packed into smaller areas.

Innovative firm

The chairman and founder of

nPoint, Inc., Max Lagally, has

been awarded a 2002 Tibbetts

Award. The award goes to firms

that exemplify the very best in

the Small Business Innovation

Research program, administered

by the US Office of Technology.

nPoint, formerly Piezomax

Technologies, was founded in

1997 and produces

nanopositioners for nanoscale

research and manufacturing.

Effective enterprise

A company that uses a newly

patented process to produce

designer polymers has won the

Enterprise Launch Pad award at

the Cambridge Enterprise

Conference. Warwick Effect

Polymers, a spin-out from

Warwick University, is developing

the process for cheap and easy

production of polymers to fit

different applications.

Innovative chemistry‘Innovations in sol-

gel chemistry to

create

nanostructured

materials that have

applications to

energy,

manufacturing,

defense, and

medicine’ are

recognized by the

US Department of Energy’s E. O. Lawrence

Award. Jeffrey Brinker of Sandia National

Laboratories and the University of New Mexico

has been named the winner in the award’s

materials research category, bringing with it a

prize of $25 000.

Brinker’s research has included the creation of

nanocomposites that mimic the construction of

seashells, to produce tough, lightweight

structures. He has demonstrated the direct writing

of functional self-assembled nanostructures with

computer-driven pens and ink-jet printers. Brinker

has also incorporated conjugated polymers into

nanostructured hosts, enabling control of charge

and energy transport in organic electronics.

Leading lightsIsamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano of Meijo

University, Japan, and Shuji Nakamura of the

University of California, Santa Barbara, receive the

2002 Takeda Award for the development of the

blue light-emitting diode (LED) and laser diode

(LD). They share a prize of $800 000.

“Akasaki, Amano, and Nakamura overcame

difficult challenges that required a creative

approach,” explains The Takeda Foundation, which

administers the annual prize. “Moreover, they

contributed to the commercialization of blue LD-

and LED-based devices.”

Blue light-emitting semiconductor devices have a

wide range of applications, from displays and

traffic signs to DVDs. Blue LEDs have also enabled

the development of white LEDs, whose efficiency

and long-life is expected to lead to the

replacement of conventional tungsten or halogen

bulbs in the home and office.

And the winner is...The winners of the 2003 American Physical

Society (APS) Awards have been named and will

be presented with their the awards at various

meetings throughout next year. Full details can be

found on the APS web-site (www.aps.org).

The David Adler Lectureship Award for materials

physics goes to Ivan Schuller of the University of

California, San Diego, for research in metallic

heterostructures and superlattices. Helmut Strey

of the University of Massachusetts receives the

John H. Dillon Medal for research on biopolymers

and polyelectrolytes. Charles Lieber’s work on

functional nanomaterials at Harvard wins the

James C. McGroddy Prize. Ruud Tromp and

Phaedon Avouris, both of the IBM T. J. Watson

Research Center, receive the Davisson-Germer and

Irving Langmuir Prizes, respectively.

Feynman’s foresightIn honor of Richard P. Feynman’s vision of doing

science at the atomic scale, this year’s Foresight

Institute Feynman Prizes for Theoretical and

Experimental Molecular Nanotechnology go to

Don Brenner and Chad Mirkin, respectively.

Brenner’s work at North Carolina State University

includes atomistic modeling of polycrystalline

materials, nanoscale devices, and fullerenes. On

the experimental side, highlights of Mirkin’s

research at Northwestern University include the

development of a soft-lithography technique for

nanopatterning.

Sun shines on ColoradoThe Solar Decathlon, in which 14 universities built

homes entirely powered by the sun, was won by

the University of Colorado at Boulder. The

competition, run by the US Department of Energy,

required students to use solar energy to supply all

the energy needs for an entire household,

including transport and a home-based business.

Each house was judged on ten criteria to

determine which most efficiently employed solar

power for heating, cooling, hot water, lighting,

appliances, computers, and charging an electric

car. “The Solar Decathlon proves that solar energy

is practical today,” says Secretary of Energy,

Spencer Abraham.

December 200260